About this item
Highlights
- "A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions.
- Author(s): Doris Lessing
- 112 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Women
Description
About the Book
"Originally published as 'The Grandmothers' in the collection The Grandmothers: four short novels in hardcover in the United States in 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers"--Title page verso.Book Synopsis
"A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
Shocking, intimate, often uncomfortably honest, Adore reaffirms Doris Lessing's unrivaled ability to capture the truth of the human condition.
Roz and Lil have been best friends since childhood. But their bond stretches beyond familiar bounds when these middle-aged mothers fall in love with each other's teenage sons--taboo-shattering passions that last for years, until the women end them, vowing to have a respectable old age.
From the Back Cover
Two friends, two sons, two shocking and intense love affairs . . .
Roz and Lil have been best friends since childhood. But their bond stretches beyond familiar bounds when these middle-aged mothers fall in love with each other's teenage sons--taboo-shattering passions that last for years, until the women end them, vowing to have a respectable old age. With Adore, Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, once again proves her unrivaled ability to capture the truth of the human condition.
Review Quotes
"[Lessing] has never written better." -- New York Times Book Review
"A LOVE CHILD possesses both a palpable immediacy and a haunting afterlife." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"Absorbing ... vivid and fresh ... Lessing again demonstrates her remarkable social ventriloquism, an ability to convincingly project her voice into a disparate range of milieus and characters." -- Los Angeles Times
"Using fiction to explore the conditions of our lives in realms both public and private, Lessing anchors the self in the world and returns the world to the self. In this, she is a daughter of Dickens, of Zola, of Stendhal: profoundly radical and traditional at once, in the best sense of each word." -- Susie Linfield, Washington Post Book World
"Here is yet more evidence that this writer of enormous insight and prodigious talent should have won the Nobel Prize decades ago." -- Chicago Tribune
"Intensely readable ... [Lessing] offers startling perspectives on domesticity and desire." -- O Magazine
"Lessing's scathing intelligence ranges widely... each [short novel ] unfolds over decades, tracking with dispassionate precision how youthful notions come to define, even defeat, a life." -- The New Yorker
"Stunning ... showing Lessing's trademark incisiveness." -- Vogue
"[Lessing] has a seismographer's feel for the fissures beneath the surface of family and for the tension between personal yearning and society's conventions." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Lessing is without peer." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Doris Lessing is a compelling storyteller with a fierce intelligence, a keen ear for hypocricy and a sure grasp of history's cruel ironies." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"At once intimately detailed yet infinitely expansive in their suggestions of a lost world only recoverable by a profoundly observant writer ....Showing [Lessing] at the top of her very impressive form." -- Publishers Weekly
"Lessing has never been one to hide the truth, no matter how damning or devastating, and [THE GRANDMOTHERS] shows that her perceptions of the human condition have certainly not been dulled by age or by fame. She continues to be an incisive chronicler of our times and a wickedly honest storyteller." -- New Orleans Times-Picayune
"A brilliantly written book ... Lessing is at the top of her game." -- Library Journal (starred)
"[Lessing's] acute political and artistic awareness makes her vision of our time rich and almost always freshly perceptive." -- The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
"Anyone who regards THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK as one of the key books of the mid-20th century will find this disconcerting novel worth attention." -- The Sunday Telegraph (London)
"Powerful... beautifully realized." -- Miami Herald