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Title: The Grass Is Singing : A Novel by Doris Lessing ISBN: 0-06-095346-2 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: White rulers in Africa. Tragic Marriage. Sickening&memorable
Comment: Doris Lessing herself grew up White in Southern Africa. "The Grass is Singing" is set among the Whites of English descent of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and follows the life of Mary Turner. We follow an almost-normal Mary move to a farm after marriage, slowly grow deranged as she suffers her husband's stupidity and poverty, and finally her murder by a native African servant.
The setting, and the descriptions of racial relations and Mary's madness, make this quite a unique novel. Parts of it, however, are dreary and drawn-out. Living with Mary's thoughts can be quite unpleasant and exhausting! And so 1 star off the rating, for not being the easiest book to read.
Presumably, most of the story takes place during the early/mid twentieth century. Europeans, mostly of English descent, hold practically all of the farming land in Zimbabwe (as they continued to do until a couple of years ago). They use natives as servants and farm workers, and extract the utmost work out of them.
The opening chapter is striking. There is a murder, we learn, and a neighboring farmer, the resourceful Charlie, deals with it. Although Ms Lessing does not express moral judgement, we get in the first chapter a taste of the psychosis and deep injustice underlying the White farmers' ruling of the African land.
In the rest of the book we go back and start from Mary's childhood, her carefree mid-life at the city, through her distressing years at the farm after marriage. As life treats her harshly, she grows progressively more unreasonable and unbalanced herself. She whips a farmworker, getting pleasure out of her power. Later, when the same African is employed as houseboy, she is alternately terrified and fascinated by the alien male. Eventually, the native man stabs her to death, for reasons not quite clear.
The story is written entirely from a White standpoint. One might complain that we get to know little about the native man, nothing of his motives or thoughts. But this makes perfect sense --- Doris Lessing, growing up White in early apartheid, could not be expected to recognize the humanity of natives, or to actually speculate about their thoughts or motives.
The novel, written before 1950, has become particularly relevant again today, as Zimbabwe's current president (Mugabe) finally, forcibly, ended the White monopoly over farmland. The reaction from the West was massive, with the Western press embarking on a massive propaganda campaign to smear and isolate Mugabe.
A fresh reading of "Grass is Singing" explains much. If your parents and grandparents were, like Mugabe's, whipped and murdered on their own land by the Mary's & Charlie's from Europe, you would really like to take back your land. The reaction from the White world (West) is also understandable. These are the Charlie's and Mary's of today, the people who have never apologized, never paid, for their crimes and exploitations. Instead, they rule and exploit by indirect means now, and get angry when darkies stand up. The Western worldview remains essentially racial.
The novel seems to be describing a spectacularly bad marriage. Mary and Dick Turner are absolutely unable to hear each other, each inflexible in his/her own way. Also tragic is the description of how Mary seemed to be pushed into a sudden marriage simply by the weight of peer opinions.
We learn of the dehumanizing effect of the unjust, exploitative system, on the psyche of the rulers themselves. Incoming white people have to be indoctrinated, to be taught the taboo on humane interaction with natives, and to forget ideas of equality. And most importantly, we learn of the cracks in this arrangement, and see through Mary the tragic results of falling through such a crack and having an improper relationship.
All in all, an emotionally exhausting, haunting and unusual story, set in a unique social setting. In places, it gets dull and depressing, but the total effect is worthwhile.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Grass Keeps On Singing While She Cries!
Comment: The Grass is Singing is a book that I had never heard about before my English teacher presented it to the class for reading.I heard from people that I knew that it is a good book.So that was my first encouragement to read.Who wants to miss a good book? I think that the book was very interesting but the title seems to be dull and the first chapter was quite confusing.I had to read as fast as possible to know what actually happened.It gets more and more interesting as you continue flipping the pages.Especially when Moses comes into Mary's life as a house boy.Mary's death was very tragic especially when there was a hope that she could be able to see some better days after her husband has sold the land and was ready to go for a vacation. Love and hatred can really make people do anything.Maybe it was the fear of losing her that Moses killed Mary as she was now leaving him and going away and won't need him anymore. All in all the book is readable and if you manage to pass through the first chapter it is unputdownable.
Rating: 5
Summary: Original and striking
Comment: Doris Lessing's "The Grass is Singing" opens with the death of Mary Turner. How could Mary's life have ended with such a tragic fate? As the reader progresses through the novel, he discovers Mary's insufferable existence, her life destroyed by a disastrous marriage to a farmer, Dick Turner. Mary is forced to live in a rural environment in South Africa for which she is ill-suited. Furthermore, Mary's relationship with her husband rapidly deteriorates as she realises that Dick is unable to manage the farm successfully and they are constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. A truly superb novel, tragic and moving to the very last line. Mrs Lessing's wonderfully captures Africa's majestic beauty, the difficult relationship between the whites and the Natives. The psychological portrait of her heroine is exceptionally intense.
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Title: Nervous Conditions 3 Ed by Tsitsi Dangarembga ISBN: 1580050638 Publisher: Seal Press Pub. Date: 09 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Country of My Skull : Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa by Antjie Krog ISBN: 0812931297 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 08 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Under My Skin : Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 by Doris M. Lessing ISBN: 0060926643 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 11 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing ISBN: 0394710959 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 March, 1983 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Walking in the Shade : Volume Two of My Autobiography--1949-1962 by Doris M. Lessing ISBN: 0060929561 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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