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A review by mana_elena
The Cleft by Doris Lessing
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Somehow I am never ready for a Doris Lessing book when I pick it up. When I first read The Golden Notebook it was nothing to me, and kind of upsetting, though looking back on it I recall much that could have been useful to me if I read it now.
I can hope that The Cleft will be something I'm inclined to revisit. But it felt claustrophobic to read and it gave me no peace. It resolved nothing for me, and I think of one of the closing scenes of Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. "I'm sure I'll understand when I'm older." "I am older and I don't want to understand."
I think the novel has an unreliable narrator, an aging Roman senator, who has the authority of a good historian but whose position in Roman society may give us cause to doubt some of his interpretations of the scrolls he is piecing together to give us this story. I have always struggled with how authors employ unreliable narrators to tell their stories and make their points, so I'm unsure what Lessing wants us to make of this history. Some of the first 29 pages are told from a different (and altogether much more interesting) narrator, a primary source in the setting of the novel, and I feel her inclusion is meant to illustrate that, while our Roman historian has a pretty good skill in preventing his own ideas from warping the story, he is nevertheless painting it with a strong bias. Is Lessing making a statement about how men are inclined to tell women's stories, even when they try their best to be fair? I almost wish Lessing had made a tome, rather than a novel, full of all the conflicting Memories and accounts of history, but I see the difficulty in that, especially since it comes at the cost of our Roman narrator and his life story, the strictest scale and order and measure of which is meant to contrast with the vague, legend-like scale of The Clefts.
I will accuse this book of gender essentialism and I will reiterate that it was an incredibly claustrophobic experience for me that resolved no questions for me. So much that was stated as a fact of nature felt foreign and unnatural to me and I could not tell if that was the point. I won't say it didn't ask any interesting questions, or make me ask any interesting questions, because it did, but not ones I find useful or am equipped to answer any better for having read the book.
Again, I don't know how she's using her narrator because I am stupid.
I don't know. I'm tired and I'm glad to be done reading this little thing.
I can hope that The Cleft will be something I'm inclined to revisit. But it felt claustrophobic to read and it gave me no peace. It resolved nothing for me, and I think of one of the closing scenes of Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. "I'm sure I'll understand when I'm older." "I am older and I don't want to understand."
I think the novel has an unreliable narrator, an aging Roman senator, who has the authority of a good historian but whose position in Roman society may give us cause to doubt some of his interpretations of the scrolls he is piecing together to give us this story. I have always struggled with how authors employ unreliable narrators to tell their stories and make their points, so I'm unsure what Lessing wants us to make of this history. Some of the first 29 pages are told from a different (and altogether much more interesting) narrator, a primary source in the setting of the novel, and I feel her inclusion is meant to illustrate that, while our Roman historian has a pretty good skill in preventing his own ideas from warping the story, he is nevertheless painting it with a strong bias. Is Lessing making a statement about how men are inclined to tell women's stories, even when they try their best to be fair? I almost wish Lessing had made a tome, rather than a novel, full of all the conflicting Memories and accounts of history, but I see the difficulty in that, especially since it comes at the cost of our Roman narrator and his life story, the strictest scale and order and measure of which is meant to contrast with the vague, legend-like scale of The Clefts.
I will accuse this book of gender essentialism and I will reiterate that it was an incredibly claustrophobic experience for me that resolved no questions for me. So much that was stated as a fact of nature felt foreign and unnatural to me and I could not tell if that was the point. I won't say it didn't ask any interesting questions, or make me ask any interesting questions, because it did, but not ones I find useful or am equipped to answer any better for having read the book.
Again, I don't know how she's using her narrator because I am stupid.
I don't know. I'm tired and I'm glad to be done reading this little thing.