![]() ![]() Even that, Mary doesn't fully understand. ![]() She is a woman who has no feelings toward other people, thinks her life is full until she overhears a conversation that enlightens her in how others perceive her. You would think she was a feminist but she is not. She barely grieved for the loss of her parents and was completely okay with her life as a single woman working in an office. She was described as happy as a town girl. Mary never really developed any ability to relate to others. The tragic story of Dick and Mary, poor trash according to white supremacy standards, farming a piece of Africa (Rhodesia), but never succeeding, always waiting for next year. Published in 1950, this novel of realism was ahead of its time. Read for Reading 1001, this is my very first Doris Lessing novel and it is the author's debut novel. But regardless… significant as this book may be, it is flawed and not particularly enjoyable, so while you can read it if you want, I wouldn't suggest making it a high priority. They still weren't actually the same country, though. I also think it's weird that the blurb describes it as set in South Africa when it's not – was the publishing house really that ignorant, or did they assume their customers were? It's true that Ian Smith's illegitimate regime was very similar to South Africa's apartheid government, and critics of one tended to find themselves banned from the other as well (as happened to Lessing herself in 1956). While I can see why Lessing is so heralded as an author, I don't think her work is to my tastes and this book in particular made me uneasy. It's the kind of ridiculous leap of logic that we'd never be expected to make for a white character. Like, The Grass is Singing is bookended by a murder which never has its motive explained – apparently we're just supposed to assume Africans do things like that, sometimes, randomly, because they resent their oppression. There have to be so many better critiques of colonialism and racism, ones that don't fall into racist tropes themselves (and probably ones written by those who actually experience racism, although I do think it's important for the racially privileged to criticise it as well). However, if you were to ask me whether these works are still relevant today, my answer would have to be probably not. I know that these books were written decades ago, and were important works in their time. They are not given clear motivations and complicated inner lives the way that all the white characters are they're left as vague ciphers, ready to morph into plot devices whenever the author requires it. In particular, both books share the same major flaw: despite the fact that they were written as rebukes of racism, the black characters are all so poorly and weakly depicted. This book reminds me a lot of Coonardoo, which was also written by a white, female socialist from a brutally racist settler-colonial society (in the case of Coonardoo, it takes place on a remote station in outback West Australia). ![]() Of course, she's also ashamed of her husband, who she sees as a failure, and vicious towards all their African workers, because she's convinced of their inferiority in relation to her and wants to make sure they know it. There, Mary goes stir-crazy in a ramshackle house that offers little protection from the heat and too far away to enable much social interaction with other white people – just their neighbours, the Slatters, who Mary snubs at every opportunity because she's embarrassed by her poverty. She happened upon Dick, a poverty-stricken farmer, and after the most dire courtship of all time they married and she moved to his farm. However, as she reached her mid-thirties she realised that her “friends” were all mocking her behind her back for her dress sense and lack of romantic entanglements, and so she cast about for a husband, any husband. After a miserable rural childhood, Mary spent her young adult years "in town", making good money in an office and filling her free time with parties, sports, social engagements, and so on. The central characters of this book are Mary Turner and her husband, Dick. ![]() She has a talent for it, of course, and in the case of The Grass is Singing the end result is a sharp criticism of the racist, nasty society of Southern Rhodesia. You get the sense that Lessing might not have been the kind of person you'd want to befriend, with an eagerness to identify people's every personal failing and crucify them at length for it. Both are unrelentingly bleak, with miserable and pathetic characters who nonetheless feel extremely believable in their hopelessness. I'd previously read one other book by Doris Lessing, The Good Terrorist, and despite being written 35 years apart they share the same writing style. Two stars for being painful to read, not for being poor-quality (which it isn't). ![]()
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