The Grandmothers: Four Short Novels

We used to run book auctions and one day a man left a bid on a volume of Doris Lessing's autobiography. Before the auction started, he called to retract it. He'd found out something about her in the meantime and decided she was so awful he would never read the book.

I must say, the title story of this book does nothing to soften that impression. The characters are ghastly, the writing style matches. Somehow it does not reflect well upon the author.

This is the first Lessing I have tried and I suspect it will remain unfinished.

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Later: I stand corrected. Every evening for weeks I went to bed, already irritated because I knew I was about to read a few more pages of this book and that it would irritate me. More.

Yet the show more fact is, I kept reading it. And even as it irritated me, I was reluctant to put it down. I don't pretend to understand why. show less

We used to run book auctions and one day a man left a bid on a volume of Doris Lessing's autobiography. Before the auction started, he called to retract it. He'd found out something about her in the meantime and decided she was so awful he would never read the book.

I must say, the title story of this book does nothing to soften that impression. The characters are ghastly, the writing style matches. Somehow it does not reflect well upon the author.

This is the first Lessing I have tried and I suspect it will remain unfinished.

-----------------------

Later: I stand corrected. Every evening for weeks I went to bed, already irritated because I knew I was about to read a few more pages of this book and that it would irritate me. More.

Yet the show more fact is, I kept reading it. And even as it irritated me, I was reluctant to put it down. I don't pretend to understand why. show less

We used to run book auctions and one day a man left a bid on a volume of Doris Lessing's autobiography. Before the auction started, he called to retract it. He'd found out something about her in the meantime and decided she was so awful he would never read the book.

I must say, the title story of this book does nothing to soften that impression. The characters are ghastly, the writing style matches. Somehow it does not reflect well upon the author.

This is the first Lessing I have tried and I suspect it will remain unfinished.

-----------------------

Later: I stand corrected. Every evening for weeks I went to bed, already irritated because I knew I was about to read a few more pages of this book and that it would irritate me. More.

Yet the show more fact is, I kept reading it. And even as it irritated me, I was reluctant to put it down. I don't pretend to understand why. show less

I’m still trying to work out how long a piece of writing has to be if it’s called a novel. The Grandmothers is a set of four “short novels,” according to its cover. But how is that different from four novellas?

The first, and title, story is an intriguing family tale of just 53 pages. Two fathers. Two daughters. Two grandmothers. And two mothers who enter only peripherally into visits to a seaside restaurant. The waitress envies their perfect lives, which maybe aren’t as perfect as they seem, and the reader is drawn to view images of past innocence with almost reluctant curiosity. A startling, odd, sad tale, and a fascinating read.

The second story, of Victoria and the Staveneys, is an all-too-real description of a promising show more life turned around by circumstance, and a vivid depiction of the tolerance, love and affection that accompany expectations. I wanted more for Victoria, and in the end, I guess she got more than she was offered. In the end she wasn’t who anyone tried to make her, but maybe she wasn’t all she could have made herself either.

The Reason for it is the shortest tale of the four, an odd story of how quickly a culture falls apart. It reads innocently and tragically through the eyes of an elderly man, but it’s echoes of modern life can’t be entirely accidental.

And finally, A Love Child, at 117 pages, is an amazing depiction of wartime Britain and the life of a man who grows up between the wars. Introduced to communism, he finds poetry. Introduced to sickness, he finds love. Introduced to success, he keeps himself to himself and tries to analyze the reason others care for him. But through it all he misses the truth of how he should care for others. A sad story, but totally engrossing.

So now I still don’t know how long a novel has to be. But perhaps if you’re a writer of Doris Lessing’s caliber it really doesn’t matter. I’d certainly recommend the book, and I enjoyed the time spent meeting her characters. show less

This collection of four novellas is vintage Doris Lessing. Published in 2003, it encompasses many of her signature themes: the process of aging, class and race relationships, the bittersweet pain of love and passion, and a recognition that how a civilization cares for its environment reflects its health.

The title novella, "The Grandmothers" is a wry tale of two women who grow up as best friends, are young mothers together and have tangled relationships with each other's sons.

"Victoria and the Staveneys" examines the intertwined relationship of Victoria, growing up in council flats, orphaned and burdened with the care of her dying aunt, with a self-absorbed theatrical family that has a socialist bent.

In "The Reason for It," we have the show more chronicle of the decay of an ancient civilization, destroyed because its guardians could not recognize the results of their misjudgement.

The final novella, "A Love Child," has the most fully developed protagonist and plot. James, drafted into the British army at the onset of WWII, is sent off to India on a hellish ship transport. While the ship docks in Cape Town to refuel and resupply, he has a passionate fling with a young matron. The rest of the war and the rest of his life are delineated by his obsession and memories of those brief days.

Although the reviewers in The Guardian and The New York Times found the collection uneven -- I found it very satisfying and reflective of the varieties of Lessing's fictions. show less

This book received mixed reviews, and, once again, I am glad I do not read full reviews until after I read a book.
I am a big fan of Lessing -- Martha Quest is one of my favorite novels -- and Lessing is as good a story-teller as ever. Of course the con/di-vergence of class is always central to her stories.
Forget the reviews, read the first story, ("The Grandmothers"), and you will be hooked. This is a gentle story, with a surprising twist.
The second brings class consciousness to the fore. A wealthy family has two sons -- one a staid lawyer, the other who dabbles in African music. The parents are involved in the theater, and are left in all respects. One day, their younger son discovers he fathered a daughter by a young black girl that show more he had met years earlier when both werepre-teens. The family clashes over how to handle the situation, but when they try and take the child away from the mother, "for proper schooling," the values and ideals clash.
The third story is a wonderful allegory (for the US in the 21st century?) of an ancient civilization destroyed by stupidity.
The last is a story of two young men, again from different social classes, who are drafted in the days before WWII.
Lessing's fiction is absorbing and difficult to put down. I read this in less than a day. Makes me want to go back and finish the "Children of Violence" series. There are five books, and I have read the first three.
-Jim 12/13/06 show less

I predicted a year before it happened that Doris Lessing would get the Nobel Prize. I haven't read very much of her work, maybe five of her novels and none of the rest of her works, but I just felt that the depth and breadth of her output was deserving of that acknowledgement. So I was very happy when she got the award and I was determined to read more of her work. Thanks to BookCrossing I've added one novel and one book of short stories to my list.

I think my favourite of these four stories was "Victoria and the Staveneys". I found it explored a lot of the same themes that her books do but each time there is a unique perspective. I just thought Victoria's antipathy to country life was hilarious, a side of Lessing I had not seen before. show more

I also liked "The Reason for It". At the time she got her Nobel Prize someone said (perhaps on BookCrossing) that she was the first science fiction writer to get the Nobel. And this story shows her aptitude for speculative fiction (as I think it would be called). I thought it completely conveyed the society with its history and present problems and it perhaps even acted as a lead in to "The Love Child". When I read the Kipling poem that the Colonel read out (Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time's eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die:) I wondered if that poem had been the inspiration for "The Reason for It".

I think Lessing is a genius. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to read more of her. I have katayoun's address so it will be mailed off to her asap. I hope it gets to Iran all right. Since kobie03 put a bookmark with the words to O Canada on it (where have I seen those before?)I thought I would put one of the French language bookmarks in that varykino sent to me last year. show less