I enjoyed this book, an insight into her own upbringing and feelings towards here mother were especially interesting. The book is in two parts, the first is fiction about the life she would have wished for her parents and the second part, how it actually was from Doris Lessings own perspective. ( )

This was a rather unsatisfying read. The premise was fascinating - Lessing explains in the Foreword that both her parents' lives were blighted by World War One (her father, a vigorous and active man, because he lost his leg, and her mother because her lover died), and so she wanted to reimagine their lives as if the war had never happened. She does this in the first half of the book. Neither parent is given an uncomplicatedly happy life, but her father at least ends up content, and her mother finds fulfillment (although she desperately longs for children and does not have any). Their stories, though, are very rushed - her mother's ten-year marriage is disposed of in 12 pages, and a later flirtation, which lasts five years, in 4 pages. I was also a little disturbed by Lessing's treatment of her mother. She writes, after the first part, that she "enjoyed giving him {her father} someone warm and loving". She also describes her mother's "energy, her humour, her flair, her impetuous way with life", but none of this is visible in the portrait she paints.

The second half of the book is supposedly about her parents' real lives - but in fact much more of it is about Lessing herself - random musings mixed with autobiographical snippets. There is enough information about her parents for the reader to understand how trapped and frustrated her mother must have felt by her life in Rhodesia - working on a failing farm, with none of the high-society colonial living that she had expected, with a husband who was dying by slow and painful degrees. There is not enough information to understand why Lessing's relationship with her mother was so difficult - we are told several times that she hated her mother, but it's not easy to understand why the relationship was so venomous. ( )

Lessing here showcases the uncanny abilities that earned her the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Author of over 50 works (including novels The Grass Is Singing and The Golden Notebook), Lessing again visits the autobiographical theme of her upbringing. The first half of her latest book is a fictional novella detailing what Lessing imagines the lives of her parents would have been like without the interruption of Word War I. Relying on traits of character, wistful thoughts, and personality clues, Lessing casts her father, Alfred Tayler, as a kindhearted farmer. Her mother, Emily McVeagh, takes shape as a nurse turned socialite turned charitable school administrator. The book's second half is the true story of Lessing's childhood in Persia and Rhodesia. Describing the impact of her father's war injury and her mother's physical and mental losses, Lessing investigates the differences between what might have been and what truly happened. Her book is recommended for public and academic library collections. ( )

I’m fascinated by the idea of alternate histories, and Doris Lessing’s idea of giving her own parents an alternate history seems particularly daring. These are real people, people she knew intimately, and the suggestion they might have lived differently, in a way that would even prevent Lessing herself from being born, has great potential. But the story never quite drew me in.

I was impressed that Lessing chose not to make the alternate history all sunshine and light. The war had devastating consequences for a whole generation of young people, but the lack of war would not have meant a lack of difficulty. Emily’s marriage is not what she might have dreamed, and young men go off to fight in pointless battles because they feel deprived and useless. The lost generation becomes the surplus generation, which brings its own set of problems. So there’s much of interest here, but Lessing merely skims the surface; major crises are resolved two pages later, usually through the passage of time, and the people never seem quite real.

I was unsatisfied with the novella, but I hoped that the remainder of the book, which addresses the true story, would put a little more flesh on the characters’ bones. But this portion of the book, a series of reflections on Lessing’s childhood in Rhodesia, is as much about Lessing herself as it is about her parents. And again, Lessing provides just quick sketches.

I suspect that part of my problem was that I haven’t read any of Lessing’s other works, particularly the autobiographical ones. Someone who already knows and is interested in Lessing and her family might find this experiment fascinating. But I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Lessing’s work or her life. It feels to incomplete to stand on its own.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )

This is a curious book -- part-invention, part memoir. In the first part of the book, Lessing imagines lives for her parents that might have materialized had World War I not affected them. Alfred would have become a properous, happily-married farmer beloved by his children and the town. Emily would have married a prominent doctor, made her way in London society, and widowed young, would have founded a chain of pregressive elementary schools. In real life, Alfred lost a leg in the trenches and was nursed to health by Emily, whom he married. They ended up on a farm in Rhodesia -- he suffered from diabetes and died young, and she struggled to maintain an English bourgeois life in Africa.

The imagined lives are interesting if a bit flat as concerns character development. The second part is really a series of memoir essays on Lessing's childhood with chapters about, not only her parents' struggles, but about an old Mwanga tree, insects, the cooking and eating habits of the colonials and her brother. It's an interesting peek into Lessing's life and her musings as an old woman remembering her childhood. ( )