 |  |  |
Share your comments
Alfred and Emily
Lessing, Doris May
Adult Nonfiction 823.914 L566
From Publishers' Weekly:
The 2007 Nobel Prize in literature was a "bloody disaster" for Lessing, she recently told the BBC. This curious work--half fiction, half memoir, hampered by slapdash prose and an unfocused organization--may be the result of that unsettling time, when she said she didn't have the energy to write a full novel. The opening novella (the longer of the two pieces) is what might have become of her parents, Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh, if they had never married. The sluggish account of their parallel lives is notable mainly for Lessing's commentary on the changing economic, social and cultural mores in England before and after WWI. The second section is a rambling series of recollections that describe the family's failed farm in Southern Rhodesia. Lessing describes her mother's dominating personality, attributing her mother's smothering attention to her frustration at having given up a successful wartime nursing career and a vital social life to raise a family. Lessing's longtime readers will find little new in her autobiographical disclosures, and new readers will look in vain for the talent that won the Nobel. 11 b&w photos. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
Nobel prize winner Lessing tells the story of her parents, whose lives were blighted by the Great War; fictional passages imagine how things might have been. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Lessing, Doris May
Adult Nonfiction 823.914 L566
| |||||||||||
 |
From Publishers' Weekly:
The 2007 Nobel Prize in literature was a "bloody disaster" for Lessing, she recently told the BBC. This curious work--half fiction, half memoir, hampered by slapdash prose and an unfocused organization--may be the result of that unsettling time, when she said she didn't have the energy to write a full novel. The opening novella (the longer of the two pieces) is what might have become of her parents, Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh, if they had never married. The sluggish account of their parallel lives is notable mainly for Lessing's commentary on the changing economic, social and cultural mores in England before and after WWI. The second section is a rambling series of recollections that describe the family's failed farm in Southern Rhodesia. Lessing describes her mother's dominating personality, attributing her mother's smothering attention to her frustration at having given up a successful wartime nursing career and a vital social life to raise a family. Lessing's longtime readers will find little new in her autobiographical disclosures, and new readers will look in vain for the talent that won the Nobel. 11 b&w photos. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
Nobel prize winner Lessing tells the story of her parents, whose lives were blighted by the Great War; fictional passages imagine how things might have been. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Be the first to add a comment! Share your thoughts about this title. Would you recommend it? Why or why not?
Question about returns, requests or other account details?
 Add a Comment |
Submission Guidelines |
