The Grandmothers : Four Short Novels

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Summary: THE GRANDMOTHERS, is comprised of four very different novell
Review:





THE GRANDMOTHERS By Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing is eight-four years old and for more than fifty years has distinguished herself as one of the most intelligent, provocative, influential and courageous writers in English. Her body of work includes novels, novellas, short stories, essays, political treatises, plays, operas, poetry, memoirs and an autobiography. The breadth of her work stretches from life on the veld in South Africa to life on other planets. Her themes center on the relationships between women and men; the painful side of interactions between children and parents; how individuals perceive themselves in society and how they believe society perceives them; how personalities are shaped or shape themselves as a result of the circumstances and experiences of the individual lives they represent; and the way political actions affect the populace and the role the individual needs to employ as a result of the political system under which they live. She believes that most psyches employ extraordinary feats of emotional, social and cultural compartmentalization in order for life to move on.

Lessing has been lauded as a staunch supporter and defender of feminism (she denies categorically this interpretation of her work). She writes about communism; her commitment to it and her later rejection of the entire movement. With no fear of exploration and an insatiable thirst for knowledge, she adopted the Sufi way of life. This "conversion" came after she reviewed a book about it, which inspired her to read everything about this mystical yet pragmatic belief system. To find a coherent path that rejects propaganda, prejudice and ideology was a gift for Lessing. The tenets of the Sufi way of life reinforced her already cemented ways of thinking. Her novels are considered especially important because of their daring and wide range: she moves from realist narrative to science fiction and fantasy without losing her focus. She is fearless and is considered one of the most forward thinking and groundbreaking writers of the twentieth (now twenty-first) century.

Her latest book, THE GRANDMOTHERS, is comprised of four very different novellas. Each one is a prototype of how Lessing perceives the possibilities available to the individual and human dramas that fill every life. These four tales emerge as a prism through which readers can catch a glimpse of the myriad issues Lessing has nurtured from her early fiction, THE GRASS IS SINGING and her feminist opus THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK, to her visionary and cautionary books like BRIEFING FOR A DESCENT INTO HELL and MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR.

The first story in THE GRANDMOTHERS uses the book's title for its own and begins, " ... six people were making the gentle ascent, four adults and two little girls, whose shrieks of pleasure" were prompted by reaching Baxter's, a local café where they would be rewarded with goodies for good behavior. "Two handsome men came first ... then two ... handsome women of about sixty --- but no one would dream of calling them elderly." The little group settled in comfortably, the waitress knew them and brought them their regular treats. "They all sighed, heard each other and now laughed, a full frank laugh that seemed to acknowledge things unsaid." The mood quietly relaxed and intermingled with some secret the adults share and enjoy with looks and smiles.

The Grandmothers of the scene at the hillside rest came about because two little girls who met in primary school instantly became best friends. They have always been as close as sisters and live their lives as though this were true. When they finish school, Lil becomes a competitive international swimming star while Roz turns to drama and the theater. They enjoy a double wedding, move into houses on the same street and give birth to their sons at the same time. The women have very different personalities but are more devoted to each other than anyone else. Roz's husband shouts at her, "It's you, and Lil. Always. And what difference would it make if you were [lesbians?] Obviously sex doesn't matter that much. We have ... more than adequate sex but it's not me you have a relationship with." Roz is slightly bewildered but feels no great loss when her husband leaves.

On the other hand Lil is always worried that people will think they are "lezzies." But they are so far from being homosexuals that by an unspoken agreement and cunning desire they each bed the other's son. These liaisons go on for years with much joy had by all. The whole concept raises issues of possible incest, the role of mothers in the lives of their male offspring, how to define the boundaries of different kinds of love and the impact of an arrangement like this on the development of these boys as they mature into men. Lessing presents this story without judgment on the women or the sons and clearly wants the reader to ponder the decisions these people have made and what it has cost them ... if anything.

"Victoria and the Staveneys," the second piece, works on a different plane. Here, a young black girl from "the projects" or council housing has a terrible childhood filled with loss, abandonment, illness and death. She loses her mother, is reluctantly taken in by her aunt, who develops cancer, and while she is dying insists that young Victoria take care of her. When the aunt passes away a close friend, Phyllis, who is a social worker, moves Victoria into her tiny apartment with her three children and an old, ailing grandfather.

The years pass. Victoria grows up with the knowledge that she is somehow different; she has always felt herself an outsider but makes strides to overcome her deprecating concept of herself. She develops into a stunner, which is a constant worry to her guardian, who knows too well how easily a good-looking girl can ruin her life with one act of recklessness. And, of course, Victoria does. After a series of jobs that didn't always pay well, she meets and has an affair with a middle-class white boy, becomes pregnant, doesn't inform the father, has the baby (a "mocha" little girl) and keeps her. A few years later she marries a musician who, despite always being on the road, manages to impregnate her and she gives birth to a black little boy, Dickson, who is unmanageable and "sweats too much." Soon after he is born, his father is killed. More years pass, and one day Victoria decides to tell Thomas he is Mary's father. This decision holds many terrifying possibilities for the future relationships Mary will form.

His entire family takes the news in stride. They are all liberal-minded, educated and, though sometimes feckless people, truly fall in love with the little girl. As a result of their affection, status, connections and money, they can offer her a life filled with the opportunities her mother never even dreamed of. Victoria must make the most painful decision of her life. Her daughter's entire future depends on it.

The third narrative is "light science-fiction" about a place that had once been conquered by another nation. However, in this piece, that was good because the old culture was infused with learning, storytelling and beauty, all seeped in a high sense of morality, loyalty and peace. Like all oligarchies, not every leader was benign, but the most influential was Destra who, as a child, was chosen out of twelve (The Twelve) to be taught how to care for their world and everyone in it. Under her watch this place was a glorious paradise, an Edenesque landscape. But when she dies, her son is elected by the other eleven to take her place. From that moment on, their world becomes barbaric --- warring, poorly managed and grotesque. The narrator, the last of The Twelve, tells his story in slow and with deeply felt emotion, as a storyteller should. This gives readers a chance to conjure up the images he brings forth.

This is one of Lessing's cautionary tales. In it, she harkens back to her communist days for a taste of laissez faire living with each contributing to the best of her/his ability. In other words, she flips to black --- the dark side of humanity, of how worlds erode, grow dim, lose hope and regress back to primitive levels of survival. This theme is tightly woven into the fabric of Lessing's oeuvre, as seen in some of her early works, BRIEFING FOR A DESCENT INTO HELL and MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR. All of these novels speak to the downfall of societies, where corruption and wrong- minded people are able to take power for their own agendas. Lessing believes that when a society loses respect and interest in its culture, art, music, language, books, freedom to think and debate and discuss, that community will not survive. When nature is desecrated and people squander the riches of the world, only barbarism, ignorance and flat-mindedness will result.

The fourth and final addition to this collection is "A Love Child," an enigmatic, World War II love story that takes place in South Africa and then in India. James Reid is an Englishman who, with his mates, boards "... that great ship in its camouflage dress, designed to make it look ... like a blur or a cloud or perhaps a school of flying fishes, at any rate something ephemeral, now seemed solid, sinister, even furtive. Five thousand soldiers with their attendant officers crammed the dockside" waiting their turn to board the vessel that was designed to accommodate seven hundred eighty passengers and crew. Lessing describes the voyage in painful detail, as nothing worse than a passage through Hell. The men suffer enormously from seasickness, blazing heat, lack of space and fear. When the ship finally reaches port in Cape Town and the soldiers began to descend the gangplank, it was obvious they had had a bad time. They were more like invalids than soldiers, holding on to handrails and not looking healthy.

A lonely married woman named Daphne is a volunteer "hostess" who agrees to shuttle the men from the port to various places where they can recoup their energies. By chance, James stumbles into her car and over a four-day period he convinces himself that she is the love of his life and they have an affair. She becomes pregnant and to him this is a lifelong commitment. Then he is sent on a mission and fully expects her to be divorced and ready to marry him if/when he returns from the battle. She, on the other hand, is conventional and provincial, despite her indiscretion, and has no desire to speak to him or ever see him again. This romantic man and the pragmatic woman represent a major feature in Lessing's work, i.e., the miscommunication between intimates that leads to heartbreak, disillusionment, even madness. The way she details their psychological and physical problems makes for fascinating reading --- she points to another way to view human behavior and its consequences, regardless of the chilling effect it may leave.

In her early memoir, "A Small Personal Voice," she talks about the plethora of letters she receives from young women wanting answers to the "big" questions of life. While somewhat flattered, she is more frustrated with these readers. She wants them to explore the issues she raises and analyze the ideas she proposes. THE GRANDMOTHERS is a perfect vehicle with which to approach Lessing's work if you have not read her before. Fans can rest assured that these novellas are pure Lessing, radiating with everything that brought you to her work in the first place. She has always had the chutzpah to say what she believes, even when she is not willing to explain why. And at the end of "A Love Child" much is left to the reader to decipher. This collection is a keeper!

--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

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Rating:
Summary: I must detest racist author's work
Review: Anybody who heard the March 15th Interview of Ms. Dorris on Public Radio must have supprised how racist she is.
She deliberately kept on using discriminatory words although the DJ tried to correct her.
Beautiful sentences cannot hide the ugliness of her personality.

Rating:
Summary: Worth it just for "Love Child"
Review: Doris Lessing's compilation of four novellas (called "short novels" in the title) shows Lessing at both her best and worst. Only the last, "Love Child" comes close to showing her sheer power as a writer, and this novella is so artfully written, even as it meanders through a man's life, that it's well worth enduring the others to get to it.

The most annoying of these novellas are "The Grandmothers" and "The Reason For It," the latter because of its allegorical didacticism. In a collection otherwise about impossible love, "The Reason For It" stands out as not belonging, for it concerns the lessons of unearned (and unreasonable) power. "The Grandmothers" fails for a different reason: it is simply too neat, too devoid of true emotion, too hard to accept as something more than an exercise in fiction. Two women, largely indistinguishable except by name, have two sons, also indistinguishable. Each woman, for no believable reason, takes the son of the other as a lover. The two sons grow up, marry indistinguishable women and have between them two indistinguishable daughters. The women are repeatedly described as "pretty" with "brown legs" and their sons are "handsome" and "desirable." At times well-written and other times bland, this novella ends up being only mildly interesting. Especially after recently reading Paul Theroux's THE STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO, I wonder why such skilled but aging writers are exploring older women being lovers of younger men when they can't write convincingly about it. At least the novella following "The Grandmothers", "Victoria and the Staveneys," an exploration of love and race, manages to find the emotion in an unusual situation.

And then, finally, the reader, if she hasn't given up already, reaches the last novella, "Love Child." Here, Lessing takes her time to develop the circumstances of a lower middle class man who is drafted while still in college to serve during World War II. Slow to unfold but honest at every turn, this novella is a delight in detail and character, with its protagonist James earning the right to the reader's affection. With a few minor exceptions, what happens is both convincing and natural. By the end of it, I felt Lessing had redeemed herself both as a writer and an observer of the human condition.

"Love Child" alone makes this collection worth reading. Thank goodness Lessing chose to include it, for otherwise I would have been greatly disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Worth it just for "Love Child"
Review: Doris Lessing's compilation of four novellas (called "short novels" in the title) shows Lessing at both her best and worst. Only the last, "Love Child" comes close to showing her sheer power as a writer, and this novella is so artfully written, even as it meanders through a man's life, that it's well worth enduring the others to get to it.

The most annoying of these novellas are "The Grandmothers" and "The Reason For It," the latter because of its allegorical didacticism. In a collection otherwise about impossible love, "The Reason For It" stands out as not belonging, for it concerns the lessons of unearned (and unreasonable) power. "The Grandmothers" fails for a different reason: it is simply too neat, too devoid of true emotion, too hard to accept as something more than an exercise in fiction. Two women, largely indistinguishable except by name, have two sons, also indistinguishable. Each woman, for no believable reason, takes the son of the other as a lover. The two sons grow up, marry indistinguishable women and have between them two indistinguishable daughters. The women are repeatedly described as "pretty" with "brown legs" and their sons are "handsome" and "desirable." At times well-written and other times bland, this novella ends up being only mildly interesting. Especially after recently reading Paul Theroux's THE STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO, I wonder why such skilled but aging writers are exploring older women being lovers of younger men when they can't write convincingly about it. At least the novella following "The Grandmothers", "Victoria and the Staveneys," an exploration of love and race, manages to find the emotion in an unusual situation.

And then, finally, the reader, if she hasn't given up already, reaches the last novella, "Love Child." Here, Lessing takes her time to develop the circumstances of a lower middle class man who is drafted while still in college to serve during World War II. Slow to unfold but honest at every turn, this novella is a delight in detail and character, with its protagonist James earning the right to the reader's affection. With a few minor exceptions, what happens is both convincing and natural. By the end of it, I felt Lessing had redeemed herself both as a writer and an observer of the human condition.

"Love Child" alone makes this collection worth reading. Thank goodness Lessing chose to include it, for otherwise I would have been greatly disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Lessing gives idea after idea in these novellas.
Review: Each idea in these 4 novellas and the characters involved is fascinating. Over and over I found myself unsure with which side I agreed . Given the real life choices her characters faced, what would be the best course to follow? I was never sure.If you have read Lessings' work you will see her returning to problem areas she has tackled before. I am grateful she did.These novellas remind us how complicated it is to be sure of why we think as we do.The issue of betrayal, of love outside the boundaries set in society, of race and class divisions, of war, of the chaos in crumbling modern societies and of living a life that is 'not your own' --these are just a sampling of the bounty here.

Rating:
Summary: Read it for "A Love Child"
Review: I almost rated this book "5 stars" in spite of the fact that the first novella ("The Grandmothers") is almost unreadable, because "A Love Child" is one of the most moving and beautifully-written things I have ever read. I almost missed it because after I read "The Grandmothers" I nearly put the book away in disappointment.

Buy the book, read "Victoria and the Staveleys" and treat yourself to "A Love Child".

Rating:
Summary: Read it for "A Love Child"
Review: I almost rated this book "5 stars" in spite of the fact that the first novella ("The Grandmothers") is almost unreadable, because "A Love Child" is one of the most moving and beautifully-written things I have ever read. I almost missed it because after I read "The Grandmothers" I nearly put the book away in disappointment.

Buy the book, read "Victoria and the Staveleys" and treat yourself to "A Love Child".

Rating:
Summary: Two Disappointing, One Okay, One Beautiful
Review: While the title story in this collection of four novellas isn't wholly unbelievable, its characters are. Roz and Lil are the "the grandmothers" in question and they have been best friends since youth, sharing everything...including their own sons. It gives away nothing of the story to say that Roz and Lil have each been the lover of the other's son until their 30s. At that time, both Roz and Lil made a decision to end the affairs for the good of their sons. Do Roz and Lil regret their decision? Do their sons? The answer may surprise you, but, on the other hand, it might not. I think Lessing is less than innovative in her handling of this novella and I was disappointed with it.

Even more disappointing, however, was "The Reason for It." This is a science fiction/fantasy piece that seems jarringly out of place in this collection. In it, the last inhabitant of "The Cities," Twelve, is recording its downfall. In particular, Twelve wants us to learn of DeRod, the person responsible for the The Cities blatant militarism and banishment of literature and music. Personally, I think Lessing is far from her best when writing science fiction/fantasy and I didn't like this story at all. It had potential, but I think it would have been best handled by another writer.

Things improve in the novella entitled, "Victoria and the Staveneys." This story concerns a young black orphan, Victoria, and her affair with a white man named Thomas, a man she met through his sweet and caring brother, Edward. Although Victoria has romantic dreams about the large Staveney household, she comes to fear it (and the Staveneys) when she and Thomas have a daughter of their own. I liked this novella, but I felt that all of the characters, with the possible exception of Victoria, were quite stereotypical. Even Victoria is not as fully-developed as she could have been.

The best novella of the group is "The Love Child." "The Love Child" is the story of James Reid whose encounter with a woman named Daphne in Cape Town (on his way to India) produces (so James thinks) a "love child" he pines for the rest of his life. James is a dreamer, to be sure, but he is very different kind of dreamer than is Victoria in "Victoria and The Staveneys," yet both Victoria and James must come to some acceptance of the fact that life and love have somehow escaped them and that all they are left with are dreams of "what might have been" through the fault of no one but themselves.

The biggest problem I have with all of these novellas (with the exception of "The Love Child") is that Lessing seems to be fashioning her characters's emotions and reactions to suit her plot contrivances. With the exception of "The Love Child," these novellas feel both forced and more than a little false and Lessing is certainly a better writer than to resort to falseness in anything. Lessing is really a wonderful writer, one whose writing has much power and richness. While I haven't read all of her work, I've found what I have read to be on a par with "The Love Child," the best novella in this group of four.

That said, "The Love Child" is a beautiful, sad and haunting novella. It is this novella that rescues the entire collection. James Reid typifies the "romantic dreamer" who never really loves, who never really lives because of his deep and abiding belief that love and life are something "over there" that "other people" enjoy...but not him. While the other three novellas felt forced and somewhat false, Lessing is pitch-perfect in "The Love Child." It's a beautiful novella and worth the price of the book for it alone.

I would recommend this book only to fans of Doris Lessing. With the exception of "The Love Child," it certainly isn't a good indicator of the quality of her work. I would give "The Grandmothers and "The Reason for It" three stars, "Victoria and the Staveneys" four, and "The Love Child" five. Overall, that gives the book a little more than three stars.