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From Publishers Weekly
The latest by the prolific Lessing is a collection of four novellas that vary considerably in quality, with the best of them, "Victoria and the Staveneys" and "A Love Child," showing her at the top of her very impressive form. They are both at once intimately detailed yet infinitely expansive in their suggestions of a lost world only recoverable by a profoundly observant writer. In "Victoria" a young London black woman of charm and great fortitude survives and transcends the hardest of all assimilations: acceptance by a free-thinking, liberal white family. The shades of racial and social subtext here are evoked with a sure hand that even a Zadie Smith could envy. "A Love Child" powerfully evokes a strange aspect of a familiar time: a terrible ocean voyage, during WWII, by a hapless British regiment sent to the Far East to help protect India against Japanese invasion. James Reid, a young conscript, puts ashore in South Africa in the course of this nightmare voyage and embarks on a liaison that transforms the rest of his life. The detail and almost hallucinatory power with which an era and an ethos are recaptured are Lessing at her best, comparable to Ian McEwan's amazing war scenes in Atonement. The other stories are on a much lower level. The title story is about an odd relationship between two older women and each other's young sons; it is an original idea, but curiously lame in the telling. And "The Reason for It" is one of those peculiar tales in the SF/fantasy genre that Lessing does well enough, but that never seem to be quite her m‚tier. Still, the two prize pieces here are well worth the price.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
After more than 50 years as a great writer, Lessing continues to break new ground with this exciting collection of four short novels about intimacy among family, friends, and lovers. In the daring title story, two close girlfriends marry good men and raise their children together; then each woman has a passionate affair with the other's son. The sons eventually get married, but what chance do their wives have? In "Victoria and the Staveneys," a poor black child longs for a room of her own, and a liberal, rich white family does help her; but it's her child, Mary, who will find space in the middle class--if her mom can let her go. "A Love Child" tells a rare World War II story of bored troops stuck in India (they joined up to fight Hitler, why are they defending the British Empire?) and about one soldier haunted forever by his brief, secret, passionate affair. Except for "The Grandmothers," the stories go on too long. You can't wait to find out what happens, and you wish Lessing would get on with it. But then beautiful individual sentences stop you with their startling insight about experience usually hidden in silence. Yes, Lessing needs editing, but that was even true of her unforgettable classic The Golden Notebook (1962). Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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On either side of a little promontory loaded with cafes and restaurants was a frisky but decorous sea, nothing like the real ocean that roared and rumbled outside the gape of the enclosing bay and barrier rocks known by everyone - and it was even on the charts - as Baxter's Teeth. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
On either side of a little promontory loaded with cafes and restaurants was a frisky but decorous sea, nothing like the real ocean that roared and rumbled outside the gape of the enclosing bay and barrier rocks known by everyone - and it was even on the charts - as Baxter's Teeth. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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