Rating: 
Summary: Survival, romance, ethnic confict
Review: A dream of a book. How would you survive in a world where the climate was changing, water was drying up, and you were thrown back on your wits? In this book ethnic conflicts are reimagined for a different age, technologies and animals renamed and reinvented, and a beautiful young brother and sister walk through an entire continent, looking for a better way of life.I read it when it first came out, and I still think about this novel often.
Rating:
Summary: Survival, romance, ethnic confict
Review: A dream of a book. How would you survive in a world where the climate was changing, water was drying up, and you were thrown back on your wits? In this book ethnic conflicts are reimagined for a different age, technologies and animals renamed and reinvented, and a beautiful young brother and sister walk through an entire continent, looking for a better way of life. I read it when it first came out, and I still think about this novel often.
Rating:
Summary: Both a tale of adventure and a commentary on human progress
Review: A great fan both of Doris Lessing and of science fiction, I have no idea how the publication of this book escaped my attention: it's a marvel. Lessing has visited the future before, in her five-volume Canopus in Argos series, but this book bears little resemblance to her earlier opus. Sporting less philosophy and more "adventure" (and not as challenging to read as many of Lessing's books), the novel seems aimed at a broader audience; I even suspect she may have written this story with the "young adult" market in mind. Set in Africa thousands of years in the future, after cataclysmic events have destroyed civilization and towards the end of a new Ice Age, the novel certainly boasts plenty of coy references to fossilized and bastardized remnants of our own era. Yet, in spite of its futuristic veneer, "Mara and Dann" has more in common with many fantasy novels than with science fiction. Lessing's plot is modeled after a sword-and-dragon tale: their parents slaughtered, siblings Mara and Dann are spirited away from their homeland during the calamities prompted by an unrelenting famine and drought. As the heat wave advances north, they flee up the continent, searching for a new paradise. Some of the reviews in the press fault the book for being repetitious, and those notices may have, unfortunately, turned off some readers. The New York Times, for example, assigned two inappropriate reviewers: for the daily paper, a critic who has shown a recurring and predictable hostility towards "literary" sci-fi/fantasy novels (and who, if she in fact did read Lessing's Canopus series, certainly doesn't remember as much of it as she pretends) and, in the Sunday Times, a little-known novelist and admirer of Doris Lessing's more "realist" novels who seems never to have read post-apocalyptic fiction at all. On the surface, their chief criticism is correct: like many fantasy novels, this one employs a cyclical rhythm in its presentation of Mara and Dann's escapades--new locale, followed by capture or separation, then dangers and threats, ending with flight or escape. Although the story doesn't start with "Once upon a time," Lessing admits in her introduction that the characters in this "reworking of a very old tale" end up "happily ever after." But the critics entirely miss the allegorical (and, yes, political) undercurrent: as the two survivors travel north and each civilization they encounter becomes more "advanced," individual liberties deteriorate in more elaborate--and more troubling--ways. While journeying through a continent, Mara and Dann progress from the tribal culture of the Stone Age to the mercantile society of the Middle Ages. Their adventures may resemble each other in kind but definitely not in degree, and they "live happily ever after" only when they escape the trappings of "civilization" and accept an arrangement that values individual freedom over collective subjugation. One could argue further that Lessing has created a microcosm of human history, but she's also managed to tell a great story. Indeed, instead of finding the book monotonous or slow-paced, I (like many other readers) couldn't put it down.
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Summary: Adventure Of The Soul--A Classic!
Review: A little girl and her baby brother are suddenly ripped from a life of ease and safety and thrust into a life-long adventure, fleeing for their lives in a world gone mad. Lawlessness and social disintegration run rampant, hard on the heels of pervasive drought which will soon make their world uninhabitable. The story takes place far in the future, in a continent called Ifrik (Africa), at a time when our present civilization is buried beneath a new ice age. How will the brother and sister survive? How will they change? What is the meaning behind their incredible adventures? As they move slowly and painfully north, from one disastrous situation to another, North becomes a metaphor for everyone's search--the place where things will somehow be better. The place where life will have meaning. As always, Lessing is creating more than an adventure; it is also a commentary on the human condition, on the rise and fall of civilization, on the desperate human wish to ignore bad news and cling to a comfortable present, on the thoughtless destruction of the environment, on meaningless cruelty, on tribalism, on hope and hopelessness. It takes a little effort to get started, to travel this hot, dry, dusty road with Mara and Dann, but the adventure soon takes hold of you and draws you onward. You also have to go North. This book is a masterpiece.
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Summary: Survival Of The Fittest..
Review: Another one of Doris Lessing's eye openers. A fantastic (and even optimistic) adventure story with all the ingredients to keep anyone entertained... A story that will make you think, too. I.e. about how people in any kind of society absolutely refuse to LOOK at their reality. Where they're really at. How they/we try our hardest to stay asleep (comfortably or not), even in the face of disaster. Mara almost falls prey to that same habit (nobody's perfect - and she certainly isn't either), although she has had the benefit from an early age of some special training in *How to See*. The simple description of how this training is achieved (what it enables you to do and what still is up to your courage and guts) is by itself worth reading the book for. Go and get it - it'll be fun and well worth your while.
Rating: 
Summary: brilliant quasi-fable for curious and quarrelsome humanity
Review: Doris Lessing has many strengths as a novelist, and many of them work together in Mara and Dann. First, she creates a realistic world that, although not our own, has enough recognizable points to hang an emotional connection upon. Second, she links the concrete "real" world of survival with the needs for love, and the social-political (in the broadest sense)network, which very few authors do, or can do. Third, she tells a ripping good yarn that you can hardly put down (I was up till 1:30 last night finishing it!) Mara and Dann are fascinating characters in a world where survival is a day-by-day matter. Nonetheless, they look for love and security and knowledge in their trek, together or apart. How people organize themselves in slave states, military dictatorships or village bully-states, all impact on their survival. Although the face of the planet has changed so much, how we continue to repeat the same old stories. One ubiquitous world story is that of the Quest, and the endless drive north in this book, although prompted often by obvious physical needs, is a true Quest, and demonstrates even how people, even those with not enough to drink, need a dream of something better, somewhere. As someone suffering from wanderlust, I identified with the need to move on, and perhaps a good companion book to this would by Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. I was also impressed by the contradictory needs for stability, and how many of the cities and tribes travelled through would ignore all the bad omens in nature and rumour in order to protect what they had, until a crisis finally forced flight upon them. Doris Lessing is a great writer - she sets up a clear mirror in which we see ourselves in lights and circumstances where both human strengths and frailties are spotlit without sentimentality. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: An elegant, compelling tale
Review: Doris Lessing is a tremendously accomplished writer, and this novel is one of her best, as well as one of her most accessible. The story is compelling, the characters are carefully developed, and the setting is remarkably vivid. For months after finishing Mara and Dann, scenes from it were still playing through my mind and the title characters continued to haunt me. Lessing is not a great stylist; she uses language as a means to an end. And yet she creates a unique effect with her rather plain sentences because she is a brilliant observer of life and humanity -- her choice of details rarely fails to render a scene whole and convincing in the reader's mind. With a novel like this, which takes place during a future ice age in Africa, such details are vital to the success of the tale. There are slow spots in the story, so it's not exactly a page-turner, but for the most part this is a book which carries the reader along rather effortlessly -- we want to know what becomes of Mara and Dann, we want to continue to explore this strange terrain, we yearn to see how Lessing will illuminate our lives with her imaginative leaps. The only book I can think of which compares to Mara and Dann is Walter Miller's A Canticle for Liebowitz; but Lessing's novel is even richer, even more profound, even more stunning by the end.
Rating:
Summary: An elegant, compelling tale
Review: Doris Lessing is a tremendously accomplished writer, and this novel is one of her best, as well as one of her most accessible. The story is compelling, the characters are carefully developed, and the setting is remarkably vivid. For months after finishing Mara and Dann, scenes from it were still playing through my mind and the title characters continued to haunt me. Lessing is not a great stylist; she uses language as a means to an end. And yet she creates a unique effect with her rather plain sentences because she is a brilliant observer of life and humanity -- her choice of details rarely fails to render a scene whole and convincing in the reader's mind. With a novel like this, which takes place during a future ice age in Africa, such details are vital to the success of the tale. There are slow spots in the story, so it's not exactly a page-turner, but for the most part this is a book which carries the reader along rather effortlessly -- we want to know what becomes of Mara and Dann, we want to continue to explore this strange terrain, we yearn to see how Lessing will illuminate our lives with her imaginative leaps. The only book I can think of which compares to Mara and Dann is Walter Miller's A Canticle for Liebowitz; but Lessing's novel is even richer, even more profound, even more stunning by the end.
Rating:
Summary: What a Movie This Would Make!
Review: Doris Lessing is writing some wonderful books these days, and Mara and Dann is one of her most interesting tales. My initial impression is that this book holds it own with some of her masterpieces. Suffice it to say that it is simply wonderful. Mrs. Lessing's strong imagination and narrative control results in a fully developed future world that reads more like history than science fiction. The novel is set at the presumptive beginning of the end of an ice age far in the future. We follow Mara and Dann, the two protagonists, on their quest from drought-stricken south central Ifrik, what we call Africa, towards the undefined North. A permanent drought has developed where they live, and the region no longer supports human life. The North becomes the symbolic goal of their quest, an undefined something where things simply have to be better. This is an heroic quest, but the characters are seeking a life, not a throne. The book is brutal, and the characters live unforgiving lives. In a time when there is not enough, people steal basic necessities from others and look upon death in a roadway as just another part of life. Children die, are left in the desert, and no one grieves for them. Ifrik is changing so that only insects and reptiles thrive. Humans have changed inexplicably, but the protagonists have no frame of reference to explain what is different. Some groups seem almost Neanderthal, living in caves and rock villages, and some villages contain only people who are exact copies of each other. As the characters move North on their quest, they pass through many cities, towns, and villages. There are moderately benign states that ignore the expanding drought to their ultimate detriment. There are river towns that live in more or less anarchy. There are states ruled by incredibly stupid generals. There are frontier cities where money is still the most important thing and women can be won and lost at dice. The pictures Lessing paints of these different ways of life is for me the most fascinating aspect of the book. Mrs. Lessing continues to amaze me with the range and depth of her talents. "What did you see?" I saw a world that is hard to forget. HIGHLY recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Quite an adventure
Review: Every once in a while, it is good to read a work of fantasy. In this novel, Mara and Dann are living in Ifrik (Africa) many, many years in the future. Some catastrophe has taken place on Planet Earth, and civilization as we know it had been obliterated. Mara and Dann belong to the civilization that rose from the devastation. They will travel from southern to northern Ifrik during some very entertaining 400 or so pages. Two things I enjoyed: first, the map of Ifrik at the very beginning of the book. It was a valuable reference. Also, I liked the modified names that pepper the story. Ifrik is Africa, Yerrup is Europe, and the best: the legends of unhappy women, like Mam Bova, Ankrena, Mam Bedfly! What I didn't like were seven-year-old Mara asking questions that were totally out of her league, the figure of Kulik (why is he so bent in chasing them?), and the final arrival to the Promised Land. There was something very anti-climactic there. But, as a whole, this is an enjoyable novel, very engaging.
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