Doris Lessing (1919–2013)

Most people, when confronted with the problems of juvenile delinquency or generational chasms between parents and children, would try to understand where the youth, troubled as they may be, are coming from. Doris Lessing, on the other hand, writes a novel about a woman who gives birth to a neanderthal. I have to say I loved this bonkers novel, which starts out as a sly commentary on the changing sexual and gender norms of Britons in the 1960s and 1970s and turns into a bizarre science show more fiction novel. show less

Published in 1950 and set in Southern Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe) in the 1940s, the book opens with a news announcement that Mary Turner, wife of struggling local British farmer Richard Turner, has been found murdered on her verandah. The couple’s house attendant, Moses, has been arrested. The neighboring successful farmer, Charlie Slatter, seems anxious to downplay the murder and move on. A young newcomer to the area, Tony Marston, wonders why the authorities do not want to find out show more what happened and why.

Though at first it appears to be a murder mystery, this story is so much more. It is an exploration of the racial divide in southern Africa between the white landowners and the native workers. It also portrays the role of women in society of the time and the expectation that they would marry. Mary is independent at the time but overhears gossip that causes her to make an unfortunate decision, which will drastically impact her life. Mary is a rather unlikeable character, but reasons behind her unpleasantness are gradually revealed.

I felt the underlying current of discord as I was reading. We know something bad will happen and the author does a great job of conveying the tensions to the reader, slowly building to the climax. I cannot say too much without spoiling, so suffice it to say that it is a complex multi-layered social commentary that induces a feeling of impending doom. Lessing spent her youth in this region of the world, so she was relying on first-hand experience. I can see why this book is considered a classic. show less

The first volume of Canopus in Argos: Archives is presented in the form of a series of documents about the planet Shikasta, which is the Canopean name for "Earth," chronicling its development and abandonment by the agents of Canopus. Canopus is one of several empires in the galaxy, though it operates on a benevolent basis, coming off an awful lot like the Ekumen in Ursula Le Guin's novels, pushing potential planets to be "ready" for entrance into its alliance. Most of the documents are from show more the perspective of Johor, a Canopean assigned to Shikasta many times over the millennia under a number of different guises, as he works to battle the influence of the planet Shammat in the Empire of Puttiora. Put simply, Canopus is the source of all that is good on Earth, while Shammat promotes disharmony and ill-feeling. Sometimes this is interesting, but the secret history does go on rather a while-- reading government documents gets rather dry when there's no clear narrative. I did like the bits where Johor plants some ideas on Shikasta before he departs in a last-ditch effort to secure the planet. The best part of the novel was the last third or so, when Johor is incarnated in the late 20th century as George Sherban, a British youth leader. Much of this section is told from the perspective of Rachel Sherban, George's unknowing younger sister, and her tale is what kept me interested, as she tries to make sense of the increasingly distressed modern world. But she fades out of the story, and I found the end kind of dull, even in the midst of nuclear apocalypse.

Looking for information on the various "Zones" that surround Earth (Johor enters into Zone Six to be incarnated, where he sees the souls of the recently departed waiting for their chance to return to Earth; I didn't see how this fit into how the Zones are depicted in the second book, and in fact I still don't), I found an on-line book club's discussion of the novel, which made a point that had not occurred to me: the (villainous) Chinese actually don't come across a whole lot differently than the Canopeans, claiming that they are working for the benefit of the people they are manipulating. But if we are supposed to see the Canopeans as somewhat villainous themselves, the text is very good about never quite giving you a solid piece of evidence to hang that argument on. The whole thing could be written with no self-consciousness, no realization that the Canopeans are no different from the Chinese or Shammat just because they are ostensibly "right." What sealed it for me, though, was the the title: the (gloriously long) title calls direct attention to the fact that this is a collection of documents collected by a particular group for a particular purpose. Why would Lessing do that if she didn't want her readers pondering that fact all the way through? Were the Canopeans really no different from everyone else? It was something for me to ponder as I moved forward with the series. (I keep on meaning to look up reviews and academic criticism to see if anyone has taken up this idea, but I've never remembered.) show less

The Grass is Singing opens with the murder of Mary Turner, a white Southern Rhodesian's farmer's wife, by one of the farm's black workers. Whilst to the local police this is an open and shut case of simple "native" brutality, as we walk back through the years in Mary's life we discover that a long and complex road of disappointment and racial prejudice has ultimately laid the path to her murder.

I found this incredibly layered novel to be profoundly psychoanalytical and disturbing. In 200 show more short pages Lessing manages to convey the utter horror of a black/white segregated 1940s Southern Africa in a way that affected me much more than other books I've read with this setting. Mary's loathing of "the natives" runs much deeper than her husband's, manifesting itself in untempered disdain and a complete inability to consider the black workers on any human level. Her husband Dick tries to operate his farm workforce with a level of fairness, yet one doesn't have to peel back the layers of the onion too far to see that this "fairness" is based on the doctrine of keeping the coloured man down in his place under the total control of the the white man.

He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white South Africa, that is "Thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the nigger will see that he is as good as you are".

This is not only a novel about racial hatred, however. The Grass is Singing is an acutely observant look at the human psyche, of how life's twists and turns slowly but surely sour and disappoint a once vibrant and popular woman until she loses herself completely into that which she had always so defiantly tried to avoid becoming.

I've found this a very difficult book to review as there are so many facets to it, but what I think stands out most is it's starkly honest portrayal of how the white southern Africans consider their fellow black men to be entirely sub-human and requiring management in the same way as the beasts of the land.

4.5 stars - a darkly disturbing read in many ways, but a profound and important one that will leave me thinking about it for some time. show less