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You know that it is set in a vague but believable near future (London?) in which there has been political and social breakdown, followed by gangs, looting and fighting. There’s just not much detail to latch onto. I tried really hard with this but couldn’t make it past page 48.
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But I was disappointed to realize that it’s actually one of Lessing’s detached, dreamy dystopian novels. Bythell or his staff, as this would be a very easy shelving error to make, even for those well versed in literature. This was shelved in with the memoirs in The Bookshop, Wigtown. This was the fifth full-length book I’ve read by Lessing, and by far the best.Īlas, I had a Lessing DNF this month, too: The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) I cringed to see myself so clearly in Mary’s boredom and restlessness, along with her ambivalence about the idea of motherhood: “She hated the idea of a baby, when she thought of its helplessness, its dependence, the mess, the worry. So many passages struck me for their effortless profundity. The land itself seems to be conspiring against them, too, or is at least indifferent to their plans and dreams. There’s a sense in which this was all fated: Dick is weak, someone Mary pities rather than loves and respects and Mary’s mixed-up feelings toward her black servants – fear, contempt, curiosity and attraction – were bound to lead to an explosion. The breakdown of their marriage and the failure of their farm form a dual tragedy that Lessing explores in searing psychological detail, all while exposing (with neither judgment nor approval) how Anglos felt about the natives at that time. And yet we are drawn in, wondering why she was killed and how the Turners went from an idealistic young couple enthusiastic about their various money-making schemes – a shop, chickens, tobacco – to a jaded, distant pair struggling for their health, both mental and physical. It’s a tease because in one sense there’s no mystery to this at all: we know from the first lines what happened to Mary. It felt both fresh and timeless, and I could see how it has inspired writing about the white experience in Africa ever since, especially a book like Fiona Melrose’s Midwinter, in which an English farmer and his son are haunted by the violent death of the young man’s mother back in Zambia 10 years ago.įor The Grass Is Singing begins with two sly words, “MURDER MYSTERY”: a newspaper headline announcing that Mary, wife of Rhodesian farmer Dick Turner, has been found murdered by their houseboy. I had trouble believing that this novel a) was Lessing’s debut and b) is now nearly 70 years old. Elke Wetzig / Juan Pablo Arancibia Medina [CC BY-SA 3.0 ( )%5D.
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Doris Lessing at Cologne Literature Festival, 2006.