The lines of reality and fantasy are blurred in a horrible outcome.

The summer before the dark left me wondering what happened the summer after the dark. This seems more like a summer of awakening for Kate, a summer of light and experience, even when she is at her lowest moments. This is unlike Lessing's other novels I've read and I wonder if this could be a good place to start, if you haven't read a Lessing novel, or if it doesn't fully encapsulate her uniqueness as a writer. I'm not sure. On my book jacket, The Economist lists this as a "masterpiece." I can't

I deeply admire Doris Lessing. I love that she gives weight to women's lives, thoughts, emotions, opinions, experience. Her novels are treasures in my view. I have to quote some of what she says about motherhood."With three small children, and then four, she had had to fight for qualities that were not even in her vocabulary. Patience. Self discipline, Self control. Self abnegation. Chastity. Adaptability to others--that above all. This always. These virtues, necessary for bringing up a family o...

I can't even force myself to finish this, but me and Lessing are definitely finished.

What can I say. Some writers tell, others show; Lessing reinvents you.

What a disappointment this book was. I had relatively high hopes about this book, considering that Doris Lessing received the nobel prize in litterature not that long ago (2007, I think?). While The Summer Before the Dark is perhaps not one of her most famous novels, it had decent reviews on Goodreads and was available at my local library. The first third of the book was actually quite decent. I don't mind the prose used by Lessing, in fact it is at times quite beautiful and interesting, but the...

Before it all slips away from my feeble psychological grasp, before the after-effects start wearing off, let me write it all out. About the summer before the dark.The first thing that struck me while reading was this - Fuck purple prose. Or red or maroon or magenta prose for that matter. (And I say this in full acknowledgement of the fact that my prose is often closer to purple than any other color.) Screw post-modernism and its deliberate way of being obtuse, obscure, snarky. Screw all that.Bec...

After drudging through page after page of Mrs. Michael Brown's good hair and bad hair, I ask myself the very same words so often uttered by the beautiful, pot-smoking, dancing waif Maureen: "'what's the point?'"

I love the way Doris Lessing thinks and writes. This novel has an excellent third-person narration so tight that it reads stream-of-consciousness, and yet the narrator has her own personality and views, which keeps the novel from being too hermetic (and makes it more enjoyable). There is very little dialogue until the last third of the novel, for me the weakest third, except for the end, which is something of a saving grace. This is one of the great novels of self-alienation.

Not bad, but I got impatient with the main character. I felt she got a bit self-indulgent at the end. I don't remember anything "devastating in its consequences" either (blurb, you lie! or at least exaggerate!). Originally 3 stars but downgraded to 2 because even though I read it only five months ago I've already forgotten most of it. Any book that falls out of my head that fast can only be a meh.

This is my first foray into Doris Lessing, 2007 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (and it confirmed my suspicion that Margaret Atwood is the one who should have won the award). Well, one is supposed to rate a book according to one's own idiosyncratic taste, especially on a semi-private forum like this. Hence, three stars. I do, however, admire the genius of this book, as well as Lessing's strong feminist message ("feminist" does seem something of an oversimplification for the complexity o...

The Summer Before The Dark is a great critique of femininity, marriage and the family as an institution - and a celebration of ideas of freedom, the self and how to live a previously unlived life. The heroine is forty-five.Most books both by and about women are coming-of-age tales with ingenue protagonists. Even supposedly feminist novels tend to reinforce the idea that a woman’s life hinges on her youth and desirability. This book is a coming-of-age tale in its own right, except that it’s an ag...

Kate Brown is a 45-year-old London housewife and mother of four young adults who finds herself at a loose end. Neither her husband nor her children--all of whom are immersed in their own interests and do not spare her much thought at all--need her. She takes a job with an international civil service organization called Global Foods, the primary purpose of which is to host lavish conferences for well-heeled, jet-setting civil servants who are about as connected to the native workers they represen...

While the theme certainly resonated with me, and I found myself littering the book with scraps to mark ideas and observations that connected to my life personally, or were interesting in a feminist-time-capsule kind of way, or that represent some fundamental truth about women's existence in general today, I nonetheless found the book somewhat of a tedious chore. Too much "tell", not enough "show". That said, the novel provides ample food for thought about one's role (in a family, in society), wh...

This book is perhaps too character-driven. (Stop dreaming and go get your hair done, you pathetic old bat!) And yet, I was struck by how much I could relate to Kate Brown--the capable wife/mother who reluctantly embarks on the standard issue midlife crisis, and returns to her London suburb only after an exhausting series of salty pan-Euro adventures. Doris Lessing showers her reader with all imaginable foils of Kate Brown--all, that is, except the one I wanted most to meet: the Kate who had lear...

This is wonderful...She (Kate Brown) is 1/4 Portugese married to a lovely Englishman for many years & now at age 45 finds herself suddenly called into active duty as a bona fide Portugese translator...and into a new lifestyle....At Chapter 2 she is embarking on travel to Istanbul, Turkey....I am already amazed at the clever opportunities that this author uses!On the cover of my 1968 printed paperback I found and bought from Bookmans, also The Golden Notebook is also being promoted! I fear the le...

Timing is all, and it seems like on first reading I completely missed the richness of the insights recorded in this short book. Skimming through it as a young adult, I could not imagine myself bogged down by such a miasma of self-deception as the narrator slogged her way through in search of her own authentic self.I certainly was never going to allow myself to be blinkered!Suffice to say, now that I am the age of the protagonist,I marvel at her courage and i found myself completely engaged by he...

http://wineandabook.com/2014/04/15/re...GENERAL SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve never read The Summer Before the Dark, and would like to discover it with no previous knowledge of the plot, I suggest you stop here. Since it was published in 1973, and because Lessing is a NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR, I’m writing with the assumption that I’m the one late to the party (which is usually the case) and many of you lovers of literary fiction have probably either read it already or are super familiar with the pl...

I am at a loss for words. I'll be honest - I did not get much of what Doris Lessing was talking about yet - maybe - I feel exactly like she wants me to. Kate is searching. Kate is looking. At herself. At how people perceive her. And it is taking a toll on her. This was something I felt in a refined way after I finished Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai. Reading Doris is unsettling in a crude way. It's too real. There's no point to it all. There's no storyline meandering to come to a conclusion...

For a long time, feminism was considered radical. In fact, many people still think it is. (There, I said it). The term’s connotation has been warped due to media, politicians, the patriarchy, societal expectations, the list goes on. Consequently, it’s no wonder that some believe feminism equates to hating men. While some individual feminists may in fact hate men, there is a difference between being a feminist and a misandrist. By definition, a feminist is a person who believes all people, regard...