There seems to be something
of a curse when I buy books as a week later the author of said book drops down
dead. Doris Lessing has died at
the age of 94 last November. She was the oldest Nobel Prize Winner when
she won it in 2007. She has left
behind her a rich and varied legacy where she explored group politics, feminine
identity, the colour bar, the God that failed and cats.
I have only read two books by Lessing
but it certainly seems like a lot more.
The Golden Notebook
was highly enjoyable as it contained four aspects of one person and a slightly
related novella interweaving. I
enjoyed the scenes when the main character, Anna Wulf, a writer, has lunches
with TV people she is trying to sell her story to but they wish to change the
more important political messages into something easier to swallow. I was captivated with sorrow in the
scenes where Anna pins up atrocities from the newspaper, and held in pity when
her neighbour goes blind. The
scenes when she is in the communist party offices at the time when people were
becoming ex-reds is also interesting as a period piece.
Lessing could always do this; have a
lot to offer. Often she will try
to do everything that a
novel can do: emotion, ideas, description, comedy, and the whole shebang.
In The Good Terrorist she uses a small Marxist group in Britain
to view her condition of England and it becomes an exciting, challenging, novel
about delusion and political commitment.
I’ve wanting to read Shikasta for a while but I’ve ended up reading two
of her books at the same time: Walking In the Shade and The Grandmothers.
Which one I shall do for her tribute is yet to be seen.
