a disturbing book
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Through the tragic life of Mary, we are introduced to the difficult theme of racism in South Africa, and the relationships between black and white people. The main gift of Lessing is that she manages to show us the tensions between white and black people as if we were insiders in this microcosm since throughout the book, we learn the rules that cannot be broken by white people without consequences.
It's like a journey, the reader is first an outsider, understanding nothing to the relationship , but then we see the mistakes Mary made that brought her to her fate--giving a unique understanding to the situation.
But it's too dark and unhealthy to be a book I really liked.
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Unflinchingly grim, but full of terrific prose and insight
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The Grass is Singing begins with a newspaper short about the murder of a white Rhodesian woman, Mary Turner, by a black house-servant. The `special correspondent' behind the article bluntly concludes `it is thought he [the murderer] was in search of valuables.' Doris Lessing, however, digs much deeper for the reasons behind this murder, exploring the decay of human relationships in unrelenting detail. The result is a dark, engrossing and convincing tale.
After a troubled childhood, Mary drifts through city life as a carefree young woman. She eventually feels compelled to find a serious partner, and her situation changes dramatically when she moves away from the city to marry Dick Turner, a farmer. Mary fails to embrace her new life on the farm: she shrinks from the world around. Lessing writes powerfully of the `double solitude' of Mary's loveless marriage to an incompetent husband. As Mary's marriage and state of mind decay, so do her surroundings; her torrid, squalid living conditions are rendered in uncomfortable detail.
In her frustration, Mary turns her anger upon the black Africans working on the farm, thereby adding to her isolation. One of the farm workers, Moses, comes to work in the house and his constant presence begins to erode the master-servant relationship between the white lady and the black labourer. When Charlie Slatter, the Turners' neighbour, offers to help out Dick and Mary, he acts out of concern for the status quo in white society rather than any notion of neighbourliness. His intervention does not save Mary from her brutal, harrowing fate.
Understandably, this is not a light read; Lessing is unstintingly bleak in her portrayal of Rhodesian society. Her writing, however, is sharp with insight, and makes this a compelling and highly memorable novel. This is among the very best books that I have read.
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gloom and doom
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There is a lot packed into this short book - the advent of black power, the racism of Rhodesia and feminism. The themes are explored through a marriage which was doomed to fail from the outset on a farm which is going downhill slowly and inexorably under benign but inept management. The two main characters are depicted vividly as is life on the farm. The whole book is claustrophobic as it focuses in on just the two of them to the point where the only other 4 characters hardly feature much at all.
There is no way out for the marriage and for the farm as each chapter sees new problems encountered and not resolved for the dysfunctional husband and wife.
The prose is taut and unsparing and does not let the reader off the hook form beginning to end.
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Black, White - and the Greyness of human existence
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A almost uncomfortably raw story of the inevitable tragic and shocking consequences when Mary is taken from small town Rhodesia in the late 1940s to live on a remote farm with a husband she despises. Alone all day listening to the screaming of the cicadas, feeling the sun baking her through the tin roof, enduring stultifying aloneness and ground down by the fight against poverty, Mary is trapped and helpless. For the first time she encounters the black work force and their close proximity has a profound effect on her sensibilities.
The house servant Moses in particular exerts a powerful influence over her as her mind begins to disintegrate in the claustrophobic atmosphere. Past a certain point their developing, unwholesome relationship is left to our imaginations; but it consists more of mutual fascinated loathing than love.
Published in 1950, this is Doris Lessing's first novel. It took until 2007 for her to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Brought up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), she witnessed at first hand the racial tensions and entrenched attitudes of the era she depicts.
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The grass is singing in Africa
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This is a wonderful book to experience, telling the story of an unhappy marriage and the effect of a harsh, yet beautiful environment. The couple who are the central characters are ill-matched, but victims of their environment and the hard struggle for survival in a demanding situation. It is very well written and is, to some extent, the story of the African country as much as that of the people who figure in the plot. Doris Lessing is obviously very familiar with the geography and demands of the setting. The descriptions of the features of the African locality are reminiscent of the best of the books by Wilbur Smith (A Falcon Flies,Men of Men, The Angels Weep) and of a much more recent, and quite violent read - Cry of the Justice Bird by Jon Haylett. All reflect a true knowledge of and familiarity with the extremes of the African environment.
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