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"Lessing is the great realist writer of our time." --Diane Johnson, "The New York Times Book Review"
Book Description
This wide-ranging collection of stories by the renowned Nobel Laureate - spanning more than two decades of her astonishing career - highlights her singular gifts for portraying the complex lives of men and women in a modern, often alienating world.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
It is difficult to review a collection of 35 disparate stories, ranging from a few pages to short novellas of up to some 70 pages and covering a multitude of subjects and many different social settings. Except for one or two which are in surrealistic form, they almost all make compelling reading. There is an introduction by Margaret Drabble which traces some of the main themes and the influences on Doris Lessing, and I can only follow her example in my own way.
Many of the stories deal with the complicated and often tormented relationships between men and women (recalling the battle of the sexes, as also seen in The Golden Notebooks) and with what they expect of each other, but do not get. The poignancy when, as in three of the stories, the (middle class) people involved are `in a good marriage', `sensible', `rational', and self-analytical. Several times the note is struck that for a woman the all-absorbing task of running a home for husband and children is a kind of slavery. Hardly any of the stories are happy; many, indeed, are tragic. The most haunting of them work towards an almost unbearably inevitable end. Doris Lessing is always compassionate, and occasionally funny, too. Some stories are about lonely people - some of whom are unhappy in their loneliness, while others - women - see it as a sign of their proud independence.
The setting is often recognizably and evocatively in the decade or so after the end of the Second World War, mostly in London; but in some of them English people (with the restricted travel allowance of the post-war years, which create their own problems and tensions) are shown on holidays abroad. Some stories have a strong social or political background. The last and longest one, in particular, is, among many other things, a sad and complex meditation of an elderly socialist about the nature of protest movements, perennially repeating itself in each generation, and perennially creating a gulf between the generations.
Three pieces in this collection are not really stories at all, but observantly descriptive pieces about London's Regent's Park.
All, so the introduction tells us, were originally published between 1957 and 1972, but we are not given the date of each story's first publication.
It is a handsome edition and a pleasure to handle.
Many of the stories deal with the complicated and often tormented relationships between men and women (recalling the battle of the sexes, as also seen in The Golden Notebooks) and with what they expect of each other, but do not get. The poignancy when, as in three of the stories, the (middle class) people involved are `in a good marriage', `sensible', `rational', and self-analytical. Several times the note is struck that for a woman the all-absorbing task of running a home for husband and children is a kind of slavery. Hardly any of the stories are happy; many, indeed, are tragic. The most haunting of them work towards an almost unbearably inevitable end. Doris Lessing is always compassionate, and occasionally funny, too. Some stories are about lonely people - some of whom are unhappy in their loneliness, while others - women - see it as a sign of their proud independence.
The setting is often recognizably and evocatively in the decade or so after the end of the Second World War, mostly in London; but in some of them English people (with the restricted travel allowance of the post-war years, which create their own problems and tensions) are shown on holidays abroad. Some stories have a strong social or political background. The last and longest one, in particular, is, among many other things, a sad and complex meditation of an elderly socialist about the nature of protest movements, perennially repeating itself in each generation, and perennially creating a gulf between the generations.
Three pieces in this collection are not really stories at all, but observantly descriptive pieces about London's Regent's Park.
All, so the introduction tells us, were originally published between 1957 and 1972, but we are not given the date of each story's first publication.
It is a handsome edition and a pleasure to handle.
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