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Rating: 
Summary: Doris does it again!
Review: I enjoy the writing style of Doris Lessing. I love the constrasting characters that help create a very absorbing story. The main character is Alice who carries a cast of misguided terrorist. Lessing is a wonderful writer in the way she does not need to wrap the story up in a nice package. I believe after reading one of her books you will be hooked like I am.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow, but once you get into it, it's part to put down.
Review: I purchased this book with it was new to the market for reasons I cannot recall. Maybe I felt it would be "worldly" to read something by a British author. I must have started it a half dozen times but finally went all the way through when a friend, another "reformed leftist," recommended it along with Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier" and others.It's slow. If you're into adventure novels, you'll never finish it. But something--something indescribable--compelled me to keep reading. (...) I guess it's the painful detail of particularly Alice's self-reflection that makes the book slow and difficult and long to read. A portion of the text that rang a bell for me, however, was Alice's confrontation of her mother near the end of the book. Alice's drunk mother is sulking about all the sacrifices she's made for Alice--who's been living for years by stealing as much as she could from her parents and others while whining about their "middle class" values. What is obvious is that Alice is completely transparent to her mother, despite her inebriation! Here mom is swimming in her bottle of Scotch BECAUSE of all she's done for Alice who claims to reject her values. "Why don't you get a job? DO something for the first time in your life?" her mother pleads, then accuses Alice of being the caretaker/housewife, a role she she claims to deplore. I don't want to give away the event that ends the book. Other critics are disappointed in the book's end, but I'm not. It's sort of a combination of the ending of Hitchcock's "Psycho" with that of John Sayles' "Limbo." There ARE items that the author could have spiced up the ending with, but they're not the point. The point is Alice, her pointlessness, her confusion as to her relationships with housemates and family, and with a society she ostensibly rejects. It's a fascinating story but, again, don't expect shoot-'em-up action.
Rating:
Summary: Gut-wrenching
Review: I read the book; I have not heard the audio version so cannot comment on it. The book was amazing. A chilling study of group dynamics and human motivation. Highly recommended. I in fact just completed the book a few minutes ago. I am still shaken. The book moves ploddingly, inexorably along -- there are no chapters -- building up to a terrifying climax. Terrifying because you finally see the characters for what they are -- I don't mean about the terrorist act they commit, it says right on the back cover that this is going to happen -- but for the horrible delusions they are living under. In particular, the main character, Alice Mellings. If Doris Lessing intended to jar the reader awake, to make him question his own assumptions about himself, then she has succeeded.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic exploration of character
Review: I read this book while travelling. It shows a simple girl, and then, like an onion, strips away layer after layer of her personality, finally exposing her in the last few scenes. For exploration of character, this is one of the finest books I've ever read. However, IMHO, Doris Lessing has a problem with plot, and that's evident in this book as well. It isn't resolved, it just ends.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful story
Review: Lessing shows us the inside of a group of wanna-be radicals. In a very plain and everyday way, the main character (Alice) shows us how acts of brutality and inhumanity often come from idiocy. This book really makes you think about the dangers of any course of thought taken on for the wrong reasons.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful story
Review: Lessing shows us the inside of a group of wanna-be radicals. In a very plain and everyday way, the main character (Alice) shows us how acts of brutality and inhumanity often come from idiocy. This book really makes you think about the dangers of any course of thought taken on for the wrong reasons.
Rating:
Summary: This writer! I've called my daughter after her: "Doris"
Review: Reading Lessing is like picking up the phone and hearing the voice of an old friend. Leave it to her, no foreigner to the left- to be the first to reveal the pathology inherent in those who make a political cause out of their own alienation. This is a brave statement and today, not so startling a tale- given the Symbionese trial and Ira Einhorn's conviction- Lessing drew it for us before it unraveled and as always, drew it with a care for the details of personality in social estrangement. Lessing's story of unfinished growth and the contaminations of naivete and thrill have laid the passage to what now, we in the West have come to fear as no longer distant- terror, youth gone out of control and powerlessness.
Rating:
Summary: Ahead and Boldly As Always
Review: Reading Lessing is like picking up the phone and hearing the voice of an old friend. Leave it to her, no foreigner to the left- to be the first to reveal the pathology inherent in those who make a political cause out of their own alienation. This is a brave statement and today, not so startling a tale- given the Symbionese trial and Ira Einhorn's conviction- Lessing drew it for us before it unraveled and as always, drew it with a care for the details of personality in social estrangement. Lessing's story of unfinished growth and the contaminations of naivete and thrill have laid the passage to what now, we in the West have come to fear as no longer distant- terror, youth gone out of control and powerlessness.
Rating:
Summary: This writer! I've called my daughter after her: "Doris"
Review: Why hasn't this writer been awarded the Nobel yet?!
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