Alfred & Emily

June 9, 2008
Lessing’s fiction-memoir mix up is her first book since winning the Nobel, but it’s likely to disappoint
Alfred & Emily
Doris Lessing
. Harper
, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-06-083488-3

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.

October 1, 2008
Lessing here showcases the uncanny abilities that earned her the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Author of over 50 works (including novels "The Grass Is Singing" and "The Golden Notebook"), Lessing again visits the autobiographical theme of her upbringing. The first half of her latest book is a fictional novella detailing what Lessing imagines the lives of her parents would have been like without the interruption of Word War I. Relying on traits of character, wistful thoughts, and personality clues, Lessing casts her father, Alfred Tayler, as a kindhearted farmer. Her mother, Emily McVeagh, takes shape as a nurse turned socialite turned charitable school administrator. The book's second half is the true story of Lessing's childhood in Persia and Rhodesia. Describing the impact of her father's war injury and her mother's physical and mental losses, Lessing investigates the differences between what might have been and what truly happened. Her book is recommended for public and academic library collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 4/15/08.]Erin E. Dorney, Lancaster, PA

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