A review by haazex
The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing

4.0

This was my first book by the famed Lessing. It focuses on the relationship of a poor couple eeking out a living on a farm in South Africa. When I first started out on this book I was convinced that the story would focus on Apartheid in South Africa. There are different elements of these aspects in the book, but I did not find that race was the main topic. To my surprise the core of the book is about something completely different (from my perspective) in terms of life paths, dreams and expectations versus the brute force of reality. There is also a perception of the power of the past and the present reflected in the characters of Moses and Mary. It seems to me that the novel is a study of sanity in the face of those forces. The true main character is the landscape, the unrelenting flow of time and seasons in the African grasslands under which both human structures and minds crumble. I found myself quite a bit fascinated by the unfolding of the story. The part I am particularly drawn to is when Lessing muses about the South African landscape, the colors of the sky and light, as she embraces the reader with the sounds of insects and scents of dust and flowers. The heat of the world is apparently relentless warping the perception of goals and dreams. Mary's crumbling existence and psyche are depicted in a way that makes me feel uneasy, but allows us to connect to reality. A great read making me interested in other works by Lessing.