3 posts tagged “doris lessing”

No this isn't Nicole, it's Doris Lessing.

THE GRASS IS SINGING
 
 
 
or how to  start reading a book with, let's say ...little interest (since we knew from the beginning someone was dead), and how to
.
end up  getting involved to the point I felt like reading it again, once I had finished it.

 
Mary is one among many themes in this book.
 
one can't remain indifferent to this girl.
 
one pities her to start with, may admire her when she manages to reach a higher social level, but
 
almost despies her when she sticks to the "young girls' club" 
 
 
In doing so she appears  like an immature person she proved to be once she got married
 
 
pity and contempt are the main feelings and I must admit more than once I felt like shaking her to bring her back to reality and humanity.   the book is based and built on dualism : masters and servants, black and white, rich and poor, heat and rain, heavy light of sun (shade) and bright light (early morning towards her death).
 
fascinating book    and  writer !!!
 
 

Nicole
 

No this isn't Nicole, it's Doris Lessing.

I have come up with a  shortlist of books by Doris Lessing, with a short synopsis for each one. Now we just need to decide which one to choose, and who wants to buy a copy;

The Grass Is Singing    208 pages.  1989

Set in Rhodesia, this is the story of Dick, a failed white farmer and his wife, Mary, dependent and disappointed. Both are trapped by poverty, and in the heat of the brick and tin house, hemmed in by the bush, Mary finds herself seeking solace in the arms of the houseboy.   (taken from Amazon uk)

The Golden Notebook   576 pages.  1989 

Beautiful, striking reissue of this classic Lessing novel. Widely regarded as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century Anna Wulf is a young novelist with writer's block. Divorced, with a young child, and disillusioned by unsatisfactory relationships, she feels her life is falling apart. In fear of madness, she records her experiences in four coloured notebooks. The black notebook addresses her problems as a writer; the red her political life; the yellow her relationships and emotions; and the blue becomes a diary of everyday events. But it is the fifth notebook -- the Golden Notebook -- which is the key to her recovery and renaissance. Bold and illuminating, fusing sex, politics, madness and motherhood, The Golden Notebook is at once a wry and perceptive portrait of the intellectual and moral climate of the 1950s -- a society on the brink of feminism -- and a powerful and revealing account of a woman searching for her own personal and political identity.  (taken from Amazon UK)

The Summer Before The Dark  240 pages.  1975  

As the summer begins, Kate Brown -- attractive, intelligent, forty five, happily enough married, with a house in the London suburbs and three grown children -- has no reason to expect anything will change. But when the summer ends, the woman she was -- living behind a protective camouflage of feminine charm and caring -- no longer exists. This novel. Doris Lessing's brilliant excursion into the terrifying stretch of time between youth and old age, is her journey: from London to Turkey to Spain, from husband to lover to madness: on the road to a frightening new independence and a confrontation with self that lets her, finally, come truly of age (taken from Amazon FR).

The Story of General Dann and Mara's daughter, Griot and the Snow-dog  282 pages

Mara and Dann was to my mind the greatest of Lessing’s books, not least because, like its sequel, it can be read with pleasure and profit by any intelligent 12-year-old. In the first book, Lessing transported her human readers thousands of years into the future, near the end of an Ice Age in “Yerrup”that has dried out both the “Middle Sea” between Europe and Africa and the southern part of “Ifrik ”itself. Mara and Dann began that book as children walking from the arid south to the still-green north of Africa, and ended up as young adults acclaimed as lost princes of the Mahondi tribe. 

Taken from The Sunday Times  http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article528318.ece 

The Cleft   2007

Latest book.

In the last years of his life, a contemplative Roman senator embarks on one last epic endeavor: to retell the history of human creation and reveal the little-known story of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic coastal wilderness. The Clefts have neither need nor knowledge of men; childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon, and they bear only female children. But with the unheralded birth of a strange new child-a boy-the harmony of their community is suddenly thrown into jeopardy.

In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women manage to live side by side in the world and how the troublesome particulars of gender affect every aspect of our existence.  (taken from the Doris Lessing site below)

You can all take a look here http://www.dorislessing.org/ and maybe find something else.

I would like to read The Summer Before The Dark, or The Cleft, however the book with the most votes, wins.

I will buy a book and pass it on to Marie Christine, Nicole and Benjamin (and Estelle if she comes).

Before I had chance to get around to updating our blog since our get-together, Friday, Dearest Jacques posted a summary of our evening in messages, I thought his thoughts deserved to be posted directly on the blog(unedited of course).

Thanks Jacques everything, you are quite a guy....don't forget the chocolate pizza one day..lol

By the way Jacques wins the prize for posting first.

Update:  Nicole is in second place with her input.  Thanks Nicole....Do I have a second prize...lol

What did she say, find out after reading Jacques review.