Lessing - Visitors Recommend

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The Golden Notebook	Doris Lessing became a kind of feminist icon after the phenomenal success of 'The Golden Notebook', but it would be grossly unfair to pigeon-hole this great work as just a feminist book. Of course, Lessing has analysed the man-woman relationship predominantly from a woman's point of view with an honesty no writer has dared to show, but this marvellous book has an equally strong political theme to it. It explores with amazing insight the collapse of the Communist ideology and how it wreaked havoc in the lives of committed party workers. Running parallel to the political angle is the theme of "disintegration" or the cracking up of the mind of an individual and the struggle for order. Above all, it's a novel which breaks new ground in terms of its originality of structure. The four notebooks the protagonist keeps to record her emotional and political life is a one of a kind technique which had never been employed by any writer before. A must-read for anyone even remotely interested in books! /Nisha, 30, Kuwait

The Good Terrorist	It signifies both mentally and emotionally the struggle of socially sensitive people to define themselves in a system that does not include them, as their beliefs and lifestyle tend to get reconsidered by both the society and their "co-believers". This struggle sometimes devastates their whole existence and makes them rather incapable of distinguishing where and under which circumstances an effort to achieve certain goals about the common good becomes dangerous and tarnishes the action of similar moves. /A.K, 23, Greece

The Grass is Singing	This book puts me in a vivid description of a district of Rhodesia's [South Africa] economy, beauty, along with an aberrant psyche of an educated, panicky, neurotic, feminist, selfish, never satisfied, idiotic, mid-30s women (Mrs Mary Turner) with eccentric behaviour, who was brought up in a white colonial system in a female-dominated family. She usually derived by her mother's shadow – a woman indifferent to her husband's existence, who used him for money to run her family – and in her pre-marriage time led a meaningless comfortable club life from her secretarial job. When she had to face economic, and environmental struggles, poverty (according to her) in that district of Rhodesia, as she married “Dick” – a poverty laden, hard-working, considerate, soft to her, dependent on her, farmer – she could not adjust to married life. Mrs Mary Turner never considered the poor natives as human beings, or people who have to eat, take rest or sleep, and she expected much as their mistress. She appeared to me to be seductively cruel to her husband “Dick”, as well as to native African servant boys; poor people, who earn with hardship. Mrs Mary Turner seemed to me representative of women from a pseudo post-colonial system, who often lack judgment, consideration, sense and humanity. She led her life under stupid guidance and decisions affecting the life of Dick. All were probably for her sexual obsessions and fantasy. In my opinion, Doris Lessing through this novel 'The Grass is Singing' raised her voice against colonial civilization, society, education and culture, against feminism, injustice, racism and the sexual hypocrisy of upper and upper-middle class educated society. I myself consider this feminism/colonialism practice a dangerous determinant and factors for a family economics and structural persistence, for a society, for a state, for a nation. It is also dangerous for the persons himself/herself knowingly or unknowingly and for his/her surroundings. Colonialism hence must be abandoned. Among Bengalese economically independent so called 'pseudo cultured' married women, characters such as Mary Turner are not rare. In my opinion 'The Grass is Singing' thus crosses the barriers of lands, of countries. /Professor Pranab Kumar, 52, India

Martha Quest	It is my sister's book, I like when it is a serie of books, so you do not have to stop reading a very good book! /Hedda Ottesen, 14, Sweden

This Was the Old Chief's Country	It's true and human, as well as all other books written by my favourite writer Doris Lessing. The world would be a better place to live in if there were more people and more writers like her. /Marija Čulić, 56, Croatia

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