Alfred and Emily
Warning : This review contains some spoilers
Alfred and Emily written by Nobel Prize for Literature winner Doris Lessing, was declared, shortly before publication to be the now 92 year old writer's final book.
Alfred and Emily is a curious blend of fiction and non-fiction the concept of which I was unaware of prior to reading. In the opening section, the first half of the book, we move from August to August beginning in 1902. Alfred Tayler gains notice at a cricket match but opts to stay within the farming community, he has a happy marriage to Betsy and they have twins. At the same cricket match was Emily McVeigh who has scandalised her father and her best friends mother by giving up a university place to become a nurse, her friend Daisy follows her. Later Emily experiences a short, unhappy marriage before becoming involved in charitable works, she maintains contact with her old community including Alfred, from time to time. The early section reminded me much of Virginia Woolf's "Between The Acts". Ordinary British people in the country enjoy summer pursuits, unaware that a World War silently approaches and will tear them apart. At least, that's what I thought was coming.
Alfred and Emily however is a "re-imagining" a guess, at how their lives would have developed without the intervention of the first World War. I read it perplexed, wondering why it didn't impact the characters at all, then suddenly realised that there was something "different" at work here, that Lessing for some reason had edited history and in her story the first World War did not happen.
Suddenly the involving story of Alfred and Emily brings you up short, you turn the page and are confronted by two short obituaries marking their deaths, with half a book left to go. Alfred and Emily are revealed to be Lessing's parents and the story, a story of what her parents lives might have been had not the war intervened, Alfred and Emily having become romantically involved in the war.
Whilst the first half of the book is a fiction, the second half is fact, little vignettes of different aspects of their lives as expats in what is now Zimbabwe and what was then Rhodesia. Their marriage is revealed to not have been entirely happy, and Doris' relationship with them, her mother in particular not always easy.
I suppose we all wonder at times about "might have beens" if we'd chosen a different university, or married a different person and I suppose we all wonder what would have happened if our parents hadn't met, one of my grandfathers for example, almost became a monk. Lessing seems to go one step further though, her story of Alfred and Emily seems almost like wish-fulfillment. Alfred has a happy marriage whilst Emily dies childless. Lessing strongly indicates that in her opinion Emily McVeigh should not have had children but in so doing wishes away her own existence, which makes the book slightly odd.
I found the Rhodesia episodes very true, I find it impossible to remember every incident that has ever happened in my whole life, and I'm only 30. I think all we ever retain are different snapshots of different eras, and the significant moments of our lives. Although sometimes we don't realise their significance. I am sceptical of autobiographies that recall word for word every detail of their lives and Lessing doesn't do that here.
It' s a shame that I still haven't read a "proper Lessing novel" like The Grass Is Singing or The Golden Notebook, I have only read this : a fact/fiction blend and Shikasta, an experimental space novel. Therefore I feel like I must continue to reserve judgement upon her as a writer.
From what I've read in the Amazon reviews, most people preferred the non-fiction section, I however preferred the fictionalised version of Alfred and Emily. Mainly because I like the idea of alternate realities and whether something so small as not catching the train (as in 1998 film Sliding Doors) can indeed change the world. 7/10
Showing posts with label Lessing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lessing. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 July 2011
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Book #19 Shikasta by Doris Lessing
Shikasta
Sometimes we read a book because we choose it, but I think other times we read a book because it chooses us. I particularly feel that way about my favourite novel 'Cry The Beloved Country' by Alan Paton which seemed to me to wink at me every time browsed my school library shelves, willing me to pick it up. Another reason I think we choose books is because we know that someone else loved it or it had a great impact upon them, and we choose upon faith in recommendation from them. Or in this case perhaps more out of curiosity, as an experiment, an effort to know someone more through the books that mean something to them.
Which poses the question, can you learn more about who someone is through reading books they read? Or do your own feelings about literature and the different eras in which you read the book, colour your persepective making it essentially, a different book for you?
Having read Shikasta I think so, and that poses another interesting question for me - is it possible that no-one can ever read the SAME book because of that said issue. The fact that the experiences of life which we draw from and what those experiences lead us to draw from the novels we read are always going to be different?
Shikasta is the first in a quintet of 'space fiction' novels by the highly respected author Doris Lessing who won the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2007, so great credentials there. The quintet is collectively known as Canopus in Argos : Archives, which are in the first novel at least a set of historical documents relating to the struggle of the Canopus Empire regarding the difficult planet Shikasta.
Shikasta first known to Canopeans as Rohanda, is seen as a planet of promise and brought into the Canopus Empire, were they attempted to colonise it and bring it in line with the rest of the Empire. When this attempt fails they leave the planet largely to its own devices and watch horrified as it devolves. Shikasta is revealed to be our planet Earth.
Canopus continues to send agents in disguise to Shikasta to help change the course of events, and improve the conditions of Shikastans but any improvements largely breakdown over time. These interventions are cleverly shown to mirror the events and covenant of the Old Testament, we don't realise but Canopus is our master and God.
By choosing to use observers from outer space as her primary voice in the novel, it has a sense of detachment and superiority, Canopus judges but is not to blame. The archive reports read as anthropology which as a writer is a different angle to take and for a reader makes a new experience.
Here Lessing uses the disgust and despair of the Canopeans to launch a blistering attack on 20th Century human behaviour and by doing so makes her novel something of a polemic.
This is for me what makes my response to the novel somewhat mixed. It was published in 1979. In that era and in the 1980's which followed many things occurred or were occurring politically: The Cold War, Feminism, the rise of Capitalism, and Thatcherism and the breaking of the trade unions. Lessing's writing in Shikasta is clearly heavily influenced by the current events of the day. I imagine that those who cared about those subjects or were involved in them politically or personally found the novel mind-blowing, exciting and massively important and relevant.
I, however, reading it in 2011 living in the Post-x era with the benefit of history know that much of what is predicted did not come to pass, and society has gone for good or ill a very different way. One notable "mistake" if you like is that those in the novel living in The End Times do not have and never did have computers. This kind of thing makes the novel dated yet it remains a curiosity.
I went up and down with this novel as I read it, liking it in parts more than others. I struggled with the last third, particularly The Trial, although the issue put on trial is very important and still a relevant question to this day, I found the notion of this issue having a trial itself and its written execution rather absurd. It would never happen.
Given that this book is part of a quintet I bought all five at once, and, I'm not sure if I regret that now or not, I certainly like the concept and am interested to see how Lessing applied it to different situations and characters but I am wondering if I will also find the ideas and themes of the other four books similarly dated. 7/10
Sometimes we read a book because we choose it, but I think other times we read a book because it chooses us. I particularly feel that way about my favourite novel 'Cry The Beloved Country' by Alan Paton which seemed to me to wink at me every time browsed my school library shelves, willing me to pick it up. Another reason I think we choose books is because we know that someone else loved it or it had a great impact upon them, and we choose upon faith in recommendation from them. Or in this case perhaps more out of curiosity, as an experiment, an effort to know someone more through the books that mean something to them.
Which poses the question, can you learn more about who someone is through reading books they read? Or do your own feelings about literature and the different eras in which you read the book, colour your persepective making it essentially, a different book for you?
Having read Shikasta I think so, and that poses another interesting question for me - is it possible that no-one can ever read the SAME book because of that said issue. The fact that the experiences of life which we draw from and what those experiences lead us to draw from the novels we read are always going to be different?
Shikasta is the first in a quintet of 'space fiction' novels by the highly respected author Doris Lessing who won the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2007, so great credentials there. The quintet is collectively known as Canopus in Argos : Archives, which are in the first novel at least a set of historical documents relating to the struggle of the Canopus Empire regarding the difficult planet Shikasta.
Shikasta first known to Canopeans as Rohanda, is seen as a planet of promise and brought into the Canopus Empire, were they attempted to colonise it and bring it in line with the rest of the Empire. When this attempt fails they leave the planet largely to its own devices and watch horrified as it devolves. Shikasta is revealed to be our planet Earth.
Canopus continues to send agents in disguise to Shikasta to help change the course of events, and improve the conditions of Shikastans but any improvements largely breakdown over time. These interventions are cleverly shown to mirror the events and covenant of the Old Testament, we don't realise but Canopus is our master and God.
By choosing to use observers from outer space as her primary voice in the novel, it has a sense of detachment and superiority, Canopus judges but is not to blame. The archive reports read as anthropology which as a writer is a different angle to take and for a reader makes a new experience.
Here Lessing uses the disgust and despair of the Canopeans to launch a blistering attack on 20th Century human behaviour and by doing so makes her novel something of a polemic.
This is for me what makes my response to the novel somewhat mixed. It was published in 1979. In that era and in the 1980's which followed many things occurred or were occurring politically: The Cold War, Feminism, the rise of Capitalism, and Thatcherism and the breaking of the trade unions. Lessing's writing in Shikasta is clearly heavily influenced by the current events of the day. I imagine that those who cared about those subjects or were involved in them politically or personally found the novel mind-blowing, exciting and massively important and relevant.
I, however, reading it in 2011 living in the Post-x era with the benefit of history know that much of what is predicted did not come to pass, and society has gone for good or ill a very different way. One notable "mistake" if you like is that those in the novel living in The End Times do not have and never did have computers. This kind of thing makes the novel dated yet it remains a curiosity.
I went up and down with this novel as I read it, liking it in parts more than others. I struggled with the last third, particularly The Trial, although the issue put on trial is very important and still a relevant question to this day, I found the notion of this issue having a trial itself and its written execution rather absurd. It would never happen.
Given that this book is part of a quintet I bought all five at once, and, I'm not sure if I regret that now or not, I certainly like the concept and am interested to see how Lessing applied it to different situations and characters but I am wondering if I will also find the ideas and themes of the other four books similarly dated. 7/10
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