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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Murder, Colonisation
This is a required reading for a subject in college and I don't know if I like it or not. I think I went a bit mad along with Mary while reading this. It was captivating in a very twisted way, I could not stop reading when it was about Mary. It was weird. However, the book does bring so many things to talk about from themes to such well written character depictions, all layers of this book can be deeply analysed and considered. I enjoyed that aspect of it, especially its take on Mary and Dick's failed marriage.
challenging
dark
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is Lessing's first novel and what a great start to her career. I would give it 4.5 if we could. The story opens with a murdered white woman in colonial Rhodesia, with insights from her husband and a couple other white people around her. (We know the killer from the start.) This is where the book shines. Somehow, Lessing manages to describe (and condemn) the racism that permeates the society there in stark detail, while maintaining her characters' point of view. The flaw in the book is that nothing is from the point of view of the black characters, even though several are important and one is really the center of the story. I get that Lessing was writing about what she knew, and she didn't know that side of things. Yet the entire book is about Mary (the murdered woman), her life, and the consequences of her actions. About how the way she treated Moses, a black servant, led him to murder and betrayal (of himself, his morals, and his community). His violent act seems completely out of character for him and has such severe repercussions that only a desperate man would have done it (yet he could have easily had a job elsewhere). Even as we learn about him and their relationship, we see nothing that would lead to murder. Lessing's explanation is "revenge." Justified, but not to that degree.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs, Racism
I can't honestly say that I enjoyed this book, though I did gobble it down, fascinated, within a few hours. It was rather like watching a morbid, horrifying train wreck, as Mary is ground down (and actively grinds down the people around her) in her obedience to expected social, sexual, and above all racial behaviour.
It is brutally, deeply, hideously observant. As much slow horror as literary fiction, I reckon.
It is brutally, deeply, hideously observant. As much slow horror as literary fiction, I reckon.
4,5
Quel roman. J'en sors profondément mal à l'aise.
Quel roman. J'en sors profondément mal à l'aise.
After discovering the movie Adore was based on a short story by Doris Lessing, I went in search of another of her works grappling with the idea of taboo love. Somehow I’d decided this was it – and I could not have been more wrong. This misconception prevented me from really sinking my teeth in, unfortunately, and I’m kicking myself for that, because this was an intense, almost gothic inspection of isolation, landscape, and race tension in mid-century Southern Rhodesia. You could practically taste the dust in your mouth and feel the sun beating down on you. Honestly I prefer my (literary) psychological disintegrations to take place in cities; rural settings sort of bore-stress me. The last ten pages of the novel are so fraught and breathtaking, though, they made the whole novel worthwhile. At the time of publication, Lessing’s raison dêtre was probably to undermine the racist infrastructure, but even as an apolitical story it was interesting, if not exactly my cup of tea.
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
only started reading this because it's potential required reading for my major, and while it had great writing and a strong atmosphere masterfully created by the author, It's simply not my cup of tea. It was certainly interesting.