Lessing gives us the ‘facts’ of the case as set out in the newspaper report of the incident, and then proceeds to examine what she sees as the ‘truth’ of the situation. The novel begins with the murdered body of Mary Turner, killed by her black house servant Moses. The surprise on rereading it is how much of the novel is taken up with the mental disintegration of the central character and the way in which Lessing shows that mental breakdown as being intertwined with the political situation of the white colonialist farmers. I haven’t read it in some years and remembered it as a fairly straightforward novel about the colour bar in colonial Rhodesia. The above passage, from Lessing’s The golden notebook, marks out what is really interesting about The grass is singing. If Marxism means anything, it means that a little novel about the emotions should reflect “what’s real” since the emotions are a function and a product of a society …’. God knows what that remark means, I don’t. You write about what’s real.’Īnna almost laughed again, and then said soberly: ‘Do you realize how many of the things we say are just echoes? That remark you’ve just made is an echo from Communist Party criticism - at its worst moments, moreover.
Her impressive first novel is told with all the intensity and passion Miss Lessing compacts into all her work.- St.‘ After all, you aren’t someone who writes little novels about the emotions. one of her best works.- New York Review of Books By any standards, this, book shows remarkable powers and imagination.- New StatesmanĮmotional unity and force.
#The grass is singing lessing full
is full of touches of truth seldom mentioned but instantly recognized. One can only marvel."- New York TimesĪn extremely mature psychological study. "There is passion here, a piercing accuracy a rare sensitivity and power. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses-master and slave-are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion, until their psychic tension explodes with devastating consequences.
Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of Moses, an enigmatic, virile black servant. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm works its slow poison. Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Set in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggleagainst a ruthless fate. Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of Moses, an enigmatic black servant.
Set in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggle against a ruthless fate. There is passion here, a piercing accuracy, a rare sensitivity and power. About the Book Originally published: New York: Thomas Y.