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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
I was very excited to read Doris Lessing's first novel, and even more thrilled to find it fantastic. It's not a fun book to read (it's about a woman's psychological disintegration in the context of poverty and white rule in 40s/50s Southern Rhodesia) but it's compact and powerful. Lessing demonstrates right from the start of her career her amazing talent for intense prose that is thought-provoking and cuts like a knife.
I was really impressed by the way Lessing weaves social criticism of race relations and social expectations (i.e. women marry and bear children) at the time into a deeply psychological narrative. Both Mary and Dick are sympathetic characters, and both are frought with ugly flaws especially, but not only, when it comes to race relations. Both Mary and Dick completely fall apart over the course of the novel - Dick becomes nervous, frustrated and miserable, which doesn't help his inability to complete anything he starts. Mary becomes a mere shell of herself - spending hours staring at the wall in a deep depression.
The Grass is Singing is a closely attuned depiction of the destructive power of socially-mandated hatred and expectations.
Themes: race, colonial Africa, farming, poverty, women, psychological disintegration, murder, social stigma
I was really impressed by the way Lessing weaves social criticism of race relations and social expectations (i.e. women marry and bear children) at the time into a deeply psychological narrative. Both Mary and Dick are sympathetic characters, and both are frought with ugly flaws especially, but not only, when it comes to race relations. Both Mary and Dick completely fall apart over the course of the novel - Dick becomes nervous, frustrated and miserable, which doesn't help his inability to complete anything he starts. Mary becomes a mere shell of herself - spending hours staring at the wall in a deep depression.
The Grass is Singing is a closely attuned depiction of the destructive power of socially-mandated hatred and expectations.
Themes: race, colonial Africa, farming, poverty, women, psychological disintegration, murder, social stigma
(From the internet - Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".)
"In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home."
from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Thus, we are introduced into Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing.
A short book of about 206 pages, Lessing's story manages to bring forth very uncomfortable and bitter, but powerful truths about colonialism and generates some extremely confused reactions and thoughts, at least it did inside me. Looking at the horribly pathetic situation from the eyes of a white woman who is overtly racist, so an oppressor and of the denigrated gender, so is oppressed as well, makes up for a pretty fascinating, yet a very disturbing point of view.
It begins with a newspaper article about a tragedy that has occurred in Southern Rhodesia in the house of a white farmer couple, Richard and Mary Turner, who are mostly secluded from the rest of the neighborhood. The couple's infamy registers in the mind of the reader right at the beginning when the author tells us about the apathy the tragedy, despite its horrific nature, has garnered from those who knew the couple.
It then goes on to tell us about the lives of Mary and Richard in a flashback. Most of the novel is through Mary's point of view so we get to see more about her early life. The journey of Mary from an independent working white woman to a desperately poor and dependent wife, who also has extremely racist viewpoints and hence finds it very difficult to manage most of the crucial moments of her life that could have defined a considerably better future for her, is excruciating to read as the novel progresses, presenting a grim look at specific questions about idealism, morality, anger, partnership, social structures and systemic oppression.
The novel faintly reminded me of Coetzee's "Disgrace". It has the same morose tone, the descriptions of the life on a farm, sweltering heat and days and days of nothingness, dust that never settles, grime that never clears, a place that might devour if the residents do not make friends and mingle around with it. By the end the novel grows intense, sometimes delirious, as we witness the final events that lead to the tragedy spoken about in the beginning. Lessing's style is powerful, the confused emotions are captured beautifully and as a result the suffocation experienced by the protagonists is palpable.
Some quotes that had an impact on me -
"Women have an extraordinary ability to withdraw from the sexual relationship to immunize themselves against it, in such a way that their men can be left feeling let down and insulted without having anything tangible to complain of."
"....and when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip."
"He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white Africa, which is 'thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the nigger will see he is as good as you are'"
"The women who marry men like Dick learn sooner or later that there are two things they can do: they can drive themselves mad, tear themselves to pieces in storms of futile anger and rebellion; or they can hold themselves tight and go bitter."
I am surely looking forward to reading more of Lessing's books. Recommendations are welcome! If you've read the book, do share your thoughts.
"In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home."
from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Thus, we are introduced into Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing.
A short book of about 206 pages, Lessing's story manages to bring forth very uncomfortable and bitter, but powerful truths about colonialism and generates some extremely confused reactions and thoughts, at least it did inside me. Looking at the horribly pathetic situation from the eyes of a white woman who is overtly racist, so an oppressor and of the denigrated gender, so is oppressed as well, makes up for a pretty fascinating, yet a very disturbing point of view.
It begins with a newspaper article about a tragedy that has occurred in Southern Rhodesia in the house of a white farmer couple, Richard and Mary Turner, who are mostly secluded from the rest of the neighborhood. The couple's infamy registers in the mind of the reader right at the beginning when the author tells us about the apathy the tragedy, despite its horrific nature, has garnered from those who knew the couple.
It then goes on to tell us about the lives of Mary and Richard in a flashback. Most of the novel is through Mary's point of view so we get to see more about her early life. The journey of Mary from an independent working white woman to a desperately poor and dependent wife, who also has extremely racist viewpoints and hence finds it very difficult to manage most of the crucial moments of her life that could have defined a considerably better future for her, is excruciating to read as the novel progresses, presenting a grim look at specific questions about idealism, morality, anger, partnership, social structures and systemic oppression.
The novel faintly reminded me of Coetzee's "Disgrace". It has the same morose tone, the descriptions of the life on a farm, sweltering heat and days and days of nothingness, dust that never settles, grime that never clears, a place that might devour if the residents do not make friends and mingle around with it. By the end the novel grows intense, sometimes delirious, as we witness the final events that lead to the tragedy spoken about in the beginning. Lessing's style is powerful, the confused emotions are captured beautifully and as a result the suffocation experienced by the protagonists is palpable.
Some quotes that had an impact on me -
"Women have an extraordinary ability to withdraw from the sexual relationship to immunize themselves against it, in such a way that their men can be left feeling let down and insulted without having anything tangible to complain of."
"....and when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip."
"He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white Africa, which is 'thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the nigger will see he is as good as you are'"
"The women who marry men like Dick learn sooner or later that there are two things they can do: they can drive themselves mad, tear themselves to pieces in storms of futile anger and rebellion; or they can hold themselves tight and go bitter."
I am surely looking forward to reading more of Lessing's books. Recommendations are welcome! If you've read the book, do share your thoughts.
This was a powerful and dispiriting evocation of racism, a loveless marriage and psychological collapse. The description of different shades of misery was as remorseless as the sun. I couldn’t recommend it without caveats but I want to read more Lessing.
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
https://cdnbookworm.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-grass-is-singing.html
"Women have an extraordinary ability to withdraw from the sexual relationship, to immunize themselves against it, in such a way that their men can be left feeling let down and insulted without having anything tangible to complain of."
Well constructed and written with a confident, fluid style. Her sympathetic handling of characters reminded me of what Mailer wrote about Tolstoy loving all his characters, warts and all.
Okay, I'll (grudgingly) admit it. This book is brilliant and Doris Lessing is a genius. There. And it's the truth. The whole truth.
I thought I wouldn't finish it. I set it aside, gave it a day and thought that that was that. But then the ache started in the back of my head, the sort I get whenever I leave any book uncompleted (I have nightmares over the half-read Dickens on my shelf). It haunted me. The book. Everybody seems to have thought it amazing. The middle section (chapters 3-7) were anything but. I know the heat she wrote of. It shackles you and pins you down in a apathetic will-to-die. The whole book seemed full of it. Reading it I could barely move my limbs. I would lower the book and just stare at the roof. I know, of course, exactly what she wrote about. My holidays were often filled with those bouts of grey, lethargic existence. I didn't want to read about it, feel it so intensely. But I did, in the end. I soothed the ache, and finished the book.
And now, with it done, with the book spread over my mind, I get it. It really is just... amazing. The book is, well, genius. It's effective.
It illuminates, I think, from what I can tell from experience, that feeling of pointlessness that invades the soul when you have nothing to do. The madness towards the end is a daily experience for so many of us. It makes sense that it's in the book. Lessing said of books (so the biography in the back of my edition informs me) that she wrote to make the particular the general. In this she succeeded. And with it, as a kind of framework, she comments on feminism and racism. This is where the brilliance of the novel shines out.
Lessing is not didactic. I might have thought she was from the reviews on here, but she's not. She simply informs and leaves it there. It's for us, the readers to decide what's going on. All of her characters feel real. They're no mere allegories. Everybody is brought level before the universal truth that without proper, stimulating work, we fall. By that I mean work as anything that brings us enjoyment. I mean it as pretty much anything we do. Without it, we go mad. This is where she opens the debate over race, and the noise white folks make about people of colour being lazy. She brings up and argument, it seems, that pervades most of academia on race, today. She shows racism as an institution of society. That it's as much the individual as the structures they build.
I think most of what I had to say is leaking out from the back of my mind. I can't recall the words I had planned.
Just, in the end, I'll say it. Lessing was amazing and this book is genius.
I thought I wouldn't finish it. I set it aside, gave it a day and thought that that was that. But then the ache started in the back of my head, the sort I get whenever I leave any book uncompleted (I have nightmares over the half-read Dickens on my shelf). It haunted me. The book. Everybody seems to have thought it amazing. The middle section (chapters 3-7) were anything but. I know the heat she wrote of. It shackles you and pins you down in a apathetic will-to-die. The whole book seemed full of it. Reading it I could barely move my limbs. I would lower the book and just stare at the roof. I know, of course, exactly what she wrote about. My holidays were often filled with those bouts of grey, lethargic existence. I didn't want to read about it, feel it so intensely. But I did, in the end. I soothed the ache, and finished the book.
And now, with it done, with the book spread over my mind, I get it. It really is just... amazing. The book is, well, genius. It's effective.
It illuminates, I think, from what I can tell from experience, that feeling of pointlessness that invades the soul when you have nothing to do. The madness towards the end is a daily experience for so many of us. It makes sense that it's in the book. Lessing said of books (so the biography in the back of my edition informs me) that she wrote to make the particular the general. In this she succeeded. And with it, as a kind of framework, she comments on feminism and racism. This is where the brilliance of the novel shines out.
Lessing is not didactic. I might have thought she was from the reviews on here, but she's not. She simply informs and leaves it there. It's for us, the readers to decide what's going on. All of her characters feel real. They're no mere allegories. Everybody is brought level before the universal truth that without proper, stimulating work, we fall. By that I mean work as anything that brings us enjoyment. I mean it as pretty much anything we do. Without it, we go mad. This is where she opens the debate over race, and the noise white folks make about people of colour being lazy. She brings up and argument, it seems, that pervades most of academia on race, today. She shows racism as an institution of society. That it's as much the individual as the structures they build.
I think most of what I had to say is leaking out from the back of my mind. I can't recall the words I had planned.
Just, in the end, I'll say it. Lessing was amazing and this book is genius.
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes