After touching down on common ground In The Summer Before the Dark,
Doris Lessing has written another didactic, apocalyptic briefing
which she has described elsewhere as "an attempt at autobiography."
But then all of her books have been autobiographical to a degree -
all of them have been about women - while this one more markedly is
about Woman, that uncomfortable presence. The self-trip takes place
in a glum, anarchical present which is of course a projection of
the near future although it keeps simultaneously returning to the
past and the amenities that were. The city is bleak - all but a few
people have left it, services have stopped, food is scarce. The
woman here, an elderly one, is alone until Emily (and her familiar,
an unsightly cat named Hugo) is visited upon her. Emily is an
overserious, bright, undeceived girl of about twelve who keeps
running off to join one of the scavenging communal packs of young
people led by the attractive Gerald with whom she falls in love. In
between her sorties, the woman and Hugo watch and wait; sometimes
she opens endless doors to the endless rooms beyond her flat - all
devastated; sometimes she attains more "personal," if enclosed,
experiences in which she witnesses Emily as child or as infant - or
is it herself? At the end Gerald loses control over his entourage
and Emily. But it is Emily "transmuted" who steps across the final
threshold and "there she was" - "the one person I had been looking
for all this time." Read this as you will - as Mrs. Lessing's
attempt to define herself and her tenacious sex; as a commentary on
the strata of disintegrated society; on the stages of womankind,
not only outmoded but outlived; on the levels of reality observed
chiefly in regressive reverse. True, the Lessing name and perhaps
more hold a certain initial inductive curiosity but somehow no
matter how many doors are opened, unease, antipathy, "cold and
silence" are there along with Her. (Kirkus Reviews)
A compelling vision of a disorietating and barbaric future from
Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many years
in the future, city life has broken down, communications have
failed and food supplies are dwindling. From her window a
middle-aged woman - our narrator - watches things fall apart and
records what she witnesses: hordes of people migrating to the
countryside, gangs of children roaming the streets. One day, a
young girl, Emily, is brought to her house by a stranger and left
in her care. A strange, precocious adolescent, drawn to the tribal
streetlife and its barbaric rituals, she is unafraid of the harsh
world outside, while our narrator retreats into her hidden world
where reality fades and the past is revisited ...
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