Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing
by Lara Feigel
On This Page
Description
"An intense exploration of the life and works of Doris Lessing and how their themes are reflected in the writer's own life. Free Woman begins at a wedding and ends in the African bush. This is a memoir of Feigel's own journey as a writer, which becomes enmeshed with that of Doris Lessing. Co-opting a dead novelist into an obsessive, ambivalent relationship, Feigel sets about learning from her about how to live. Rereading The Golden Notebook in her midthirties, shortly after Doris Lessing's show more death, Lara Feigel discovered that Lessing was a writer who spoke directly to her about her experiences as a woman, writer, and mother in a way that no other novelist had done. At a time when she was dissatisfied with the constraints that she felt she and her generation seemed to accept blindly, Feigel was enticed particularly by Lessing's vision of freedom. Part memoir, part biography, and part literary criticism, Free Woman is an examination of Lessing's life and work, structured as a series of nine investigations of sexual, psychological, intellectual, and political freedom. Feigel combines incisive writing, elegant exploration, and intimate revelations with a delicate sensitivity to relationships (both real and in literature) in times of great stress to mesmerizing effect." -- show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
Bibliomemoirs
46 works; 8 members
TLS 6011
41 works; 1 member
Maybe This Year? Books to Look Forward To
409 works; 9 members
Books Read in 2022
5,164 works; 111 members
Author Information
9+ Works 324 Members
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
The Guardian Book of the Day (2018-02-27)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir, Sexuality and Gender Studies, Literature Studies and Criticism
- DDC/MDS
- 305.42092 — Social sciences Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Groups of people Women Social role and status of women Standard subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography Biography
- LCC
- HQ1122 .F37 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Women. Feminism
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 31
- Popularity
- 899,447
- Rating
- (4.50)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 1
