Die Memoiren einer Überlebenden

by Doris Lessing

In ihrem Roman »Die Memoiren einer Überlebenden« beschwört Doris Lessing eine unbestimmte Zukunft: Das Leben in der Stadt ist zusammengebrochen, die Menschen sind ständig unterwegs und auf der Suche nach Überlebensmöglichkeiten. Jugendliche und Erwachsene besetzen leerstehende Häuser, plündern Geschäfte, und Horden von Kindern machen die Straßen unsicher. Das Chaos der Straße beobachtet die Hauptfigur, eine ältere alleinstehende Frau, vom Fenster ihrer Wohnung aus. Eines Tages steht ein junges Mädchen, Emily, samt ihrem Haustier Hugo, bei ihr im Wohnzimmer und verlangt unvermittelt nach Unterkunft. Während draußen alle Formen öffentlicher Ordnung aufgehört haben zu existieren, richten sich die beiden in ihrem neuen Leben zu zweit ein…

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Nobel Prize, Post Apocalyptic, Classics, Speculative Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Doris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).

Reviews

[Julie G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Doris Lessing reminds me of an old neighbor we had when we were kids, a woman who lived at the end of our cul-de-sac. She was always dressed in an old-fashioned housecoat, regardless of the time of day, and any time we came within 100 yards of her house on our bikes, she'd open the front of the door and shout at us, “You thoughtless kids, you don't even care that someone is convalescing in this house!”

We never knew what convalescing meant, but we hoped it meant that everyone in that house would soon be dead and new owners would then move into it. Even if we rode our bikes in silence, we were always the enemy.

And that's who I imagine, when I picture Doris Lessing sitting down to write: a bitter neighbor in a housecoat, smoking a cigarette, raising her eyebrows from time to time to indicate to her keyboard her disinterest in her own characters.

Ms. Lessing knew how to write, obviously, the nuts and bolts of it all, but I don't care how many accolades she received; I read her work and I think: detached. It feels to me, always, as though she detached her own arms to write her manuscript from the other room, so her heart would be nowhere near her work.

This book, which is my third attempt at reading her writing, was beyond bizarre. Yes, this story is filled with her clever one-liners, like: She was an earthquake of fevers, energies, desires, angers, need. And I found myself chewing on some of her philosophical points as well. (Like, is the emotional devotion of a dog for his master or mistress akin to the pining and yearning of romantic love?).

But then I'd think: what in the hell is up with those white walls? What is she talking about? Is the protagonist clairvoyant? Insane? Is there really someone behind those walls? A decent percentage of the narrative here is concerned with these white walls, and I honestly felt that they weren't even explained and they were some type of desperate attempt at plot.

And then I'd think: could I know or understand the protagonist less? She was completely underdeveloped, other than her strange observations of the 12-year-old stranger who is dropped off on her door (and whose relationship to her or her appearance is never, ever explained), and her obsession with those damned walls.

And then: why did she need to create this bizarre dog-cat/cat-dog character? What on earth was it? Why did it need to be so weird? Why was so much of the book dated with cultural references, yet there was an unrecognizable animal in it? Nothing else was mutated in the story, so why was it?

And then. . . grumble, grumble, grumble. . . the incestuous fantasies.

Why, oh why, did the middle aged female protagonist need to keep pointing out that the 12-year-old's jeans were pressed so seductively against the girl's “fleshy” vulva and that her tight t-shirt showed her “bumpy aureola??”

And, why, oh why, did the protagonist imagine the scene of the girl's father standing over his sleeping child:

He stood at the foot of [the cot] and looked at the little girl, now asleep. . . She was only lightly asleep. She kicked off the bedclothes as he watched, turned herself, and lay, her nightgown around her waist, showing small buttocks and the backs of pretty legs. The man bent lower and gazed, and gazed. . . The little girl tossed herself over again and lay on her back, naked, stomach thrust up, vulva prominent.

Kicked off all of her bedclothes? Exposed a prominent vulva? What is this, child porn? Give me a fucking break, Doris Lessing. There were all kinds of male sickos writing while you were—you couldn't leave this territory to them?

I made it to the 75% mark, picked up the book and said to the cover, “I hate you.”

To be honest, you can't even trust my review of this; I am way too biased against this author.

I'm proud of myself for leaving my comfort zone, and reading a third work of hers, but she and I are done forever.

Tell me to read The Grass is Singing, and I'll tell you to kiss my damned grits.

[Fabian · Rating 3 out of 5]

At its many heights, I was reminded of one of my favorite movies ever, 'Spoorlooz' ("The Vanishing"). The golden egg, the absolute elements that make up the inside & the outside, their ever-separation...

Yep. Lessing is incredibly able at giving us an "autobiography" that seems more like a Picasso-esque self portrait than anything else; scribbles of nonsense as well as strict, blocky absolutes--all less colorful than in the mind's eye. I was also reminded of those superb short stories by J. G. Ballard about undiscovered inner sanctums that are physical representations of the human brain. There are empty rooms & stale air: it becomes irritating after moments of 0 movement, but brief. "Memoirs" is a novel about the apocalypse almost a half century old that's strange and eerie, rife with fascinating similes, lousy with sharp, steadfast images of some certain impending dread.

[Daniel Montgolfier · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I tell others that I am reading Doris Lessing, most people give me a blank stare. Either they have never heard of her, or they have. But, never anything more. I only know one other person who has read Lessing, and that is my my professor of Practical Criticism. And, she is the one that recommended her to me. I was studying post-apocalyptic fiction at the time, and my professor, during one of our conferences about my essay, said that I should try Lessing's work in that sub-genre.

So, I gave her a try. It was slow-going at first. Actually, it was slow-going the entire time. That's the thing about Lessing. She has a way of saying exactly what she means in exactly the way that you can understand it. But, the only problem is that she has a lot to say. Most of it is conflicting or hard to swallow. So, you often have to sit back and really think about it. I have not read any of her other titles, but I can tell from this one that she has a lot of talent. Talent that is not wasted, for Lessing uses her uncanny skills to preserve her thoughts in a way that is incorruptible.
But, I'm getting carried away.

The book in question (Memoirs of a Survivor) is actually quite short, but it took me a semester to finish (which, considering who's reading it, isn't all that surprising, but that's beside the point). It is the story of a young girl, growing up from child to adolescent> The interesting thing is that this coming-of age story is told by an unnamed narrator that is both very distant and very intimate. She (I am assuming that the narrator is a she, but the gender is never confirmed) is an upper-middle-class single Brit who lives in an apartment in a part of the city that is in flux. Large gangs of children and vagrants are slowly beginning to take shape. Efforts to restore the dying government, economy, and social structure transfer from the hands of the wealthy and powerful to the hands of the displaced. Exactly what the disaster is that left the world in such disarray is never revealed, but Lessing spends a good chunk of paper describing "It" in terms that are both vague and disturbingly familiar.

Lessing is also very smart about her choice of title, because this piece really does feel (for the most part) like a memoir. it is told from the point of view of someone looking back, as if looking over their shoulder, wondering what effect their actions will have on their own future. On the futures of others. Although this is a strange allusion, it reminds me of Max Brooks's World War Z, which was inspired by The Good War by Studds Terkel. Similarly, Lessing has taken the style and form of metaphor, replicated it exactly, and then given it a fantastical twist to make it her own.

The girl, Emily, is a one of the most complex, fascinating characters that i have ever encountered in a novel. Perhaps all children are this incredibly muddled, and I simply have not taken the time to look. But, the way in which Lessing fleshes out Emily's personality is a novelty that I have never seen before. She has her narrator entering walls in the house, entering walls and stepping into a living, breathing metaphor, another house entirely that is both connected to the real world of the book and completely alien to it. It is constructed of symbols so blatantly representative of Emily's childhood that Lessing's audacity is uncanny. Rather than hide her literary devices under a fresh pile of autumn leaves or lock them up in attic drawers, she has given them a safe place to be discussed openly, a genius concept that any aspiring writer would be foolish to dismiss outright.

In sum, this is one of the best recommendations that anyone has ever given me. I was surprised how much the book affected me and my writing. I would suggest not only borrowing this book from your lending library, but purchasing it as well. Lessing has proven herself to me as a master of the craft, and I look forward to experiencing more of her literature in the future.

[zed · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I was asked to say what this book was about I would most likely answer “I dunno really, I feel real bad inside for not knowing.” Perhaps after all, one has to end the read by characterising it as a sort of cloud or emanation, but invisible, like the vapour you know is present in the air of the room that you sit in, makes part of the air that you know is there when you look out of a window – your eye is traversing air, so your intellect tells you when you look at a sparrow pecking insects off a twig; and you know that the air is part of the water vapour which at any moment – as a slap of cold air comes in from somewhere else – will condescend as mist or fall as rain. This book was everywhere, in everything, moved in my blood, my mind. This book was nothing that could be described once and for all, or pinned down, or kept stationary; this book is an illness, a tiredness, boils; this book is a pain, forty three years old at the time of writing, locked into a necessity to – sweep away dead leaves; this book is the price or unreliability of hoping that one likes it, the way it might not work, the difference between the critics thoughts, those if us that like it and those of us that don’t, the book is finally what you experience…and is in a space in my brain, moved the players in my brain, just as much as there is in my ordinary brain where one hour followed another and life obeyed the unities, like a certain kind of play.
As this winter endures there is a bad state of affairs in the words in this book as in this review, with me. Or perhaps it was only that I was reading what went on in this book less clearly. Instead of understanding the book, or the story, where there was a plot that opened the tale from chapter to chapter, or even paragraph to paragraph, so I was not understanding the opportunities and possibilities, but limited to the next turn of the page, the opening of the next page - the sense of words, words always opening out and away kept within a framework of order within which I read – the sense of words, of text always opening out and away kept within a framework of a novel within which I am reading, as part of it – now is seems as if a perspective has shifted and I am seeing no meaning when I read this novel, nor am I able to read through it fast as I revisit sentence after sentence and could visit them all and get exhausted. At any rate, this feeling of surprise, of expectancy, has gone, and I could even say this stream of conscious drivel of a book, until recently so full of alternatives and possibilities, had absorbed into me something of the claustrophobic air of the realm of the ‘personal’ with its rigid necessity. And yet the disorder had never been so great. Sometimes it seemed to me that this book has been set up, carefully, correct to the last detail, simply in order to be knocked flat; as if this book had been taken over and decorated to display one hundred manners, modes, epochs – but quite arbitrarily, not consecutively and in an order to give sense of stream of consciousness boredom, set up too perfect – but then knock flat. I cannot give an idea as to the boredom of this book. Perhaps I should not have finished this book at all, it is so heaped with prose as I have just written, overwrought and pretentious. Other books of this type at least have a story to tell but this is a literary refuse dump; boring words fill the pages. Some of the words neatly set out on the pages, but tedious and dull. Once in the middle of this formal style of stream consciousness boredom – lifeless as if it had been written for a joke, the remains of my patience wore thin, I read a book on China, I even read a ponderous history of the Warsaw uprising, I even began a light comedy novel from my home town, I even baked potatoes. I knew that I had to soldier on, and if I wanted to keep my life sane at least reach the end. Already I am a corpse, with blood staining the carpet around me.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the best dystopian works ever
A woman, living in a great city, somewhere in the future, after some catastrophe has hit the earth, observes how society slowly collapses and living turns into surviving. Suddenly a 12-year-old girl is put into her custody, and a very subtle relationship develops between the two. We see how the girl, Emily (Emile < Rousseau?) gets to know the hard facts of life in a very short period of time.

Doris Lessing really succeeds in mixing the different themes (surviving in a collapsing society, the growing barbarism, educating a puberal girl) into a very readable whole. There is also a touch of magical-realism through some dreamy scenes ("behind the wall") that literally add an extra psychological dimension. All in all a very impressive book; I especially loved the subtle, very detached tone of the narrating woman. Only the sudden end of the novel is a bit disappointing.

[Kristijan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moj prvi susret sa Doris Lesing nije prošao onako kako sam očekivao...
Ovaj roman sam uzeo pre svega zbog tematike (postapokalipsa, distopija,...) i uronio u njega sa očigledno prevelikim očekivanjima. Krajnja reakcija je bila jedno razočarano 'MEH'...

Roman predstavlja neki vid memoara žene koja živi u gradu koji je uništen, kojim vladaju različite bande, vlada ne radi ništa kako bi to rešila, a stanovništvo se lagano seli u druge krajeve... Namirnice je teško naći, ali žena uvek na neki način uspe da se pobrine za sebe, ali i da dođe do najnovijih vesti. Jednoga dana u njen stan ulazi čovek i poverava joj na čuvanje devojčicu (koja je u pratnji mačkopsa ili psomačke) i ženin život se menja iz korena...

Zanimljivo, zar ne? Međutim, u romanu ne dobijamo ništa više od toga. Nema nekog podrobnijeg objašnjenja apokalipse, nema razjašnjenja zašto je baš ona odabrana za staratelja/čuvara,... Jedan deo romana se svodi na posmatranje devojčice koja odrasta, formiranje bandi na ulici i njen ulazak u taj svet. Druga stvar koja se provlači kroz roman jeste eskapologija glavne junakinje - koja kroz šare na tapetama na zidu prolazi u neki drugi svet u kome vidi prošlost devojčice.

Iako se roman "prostire" na manje od 200 strana, ima tu stvari koje deluju kao da su višak. Roman je na momente dosadan, i nije baš izbalansirano to prelaženje iz jednog sveta u drugi svet. Kada se uporedi sa romanima koji imaju istu tematiku (The Pesthouse, The Road, On the Beach,...) ovaj roman uopšte ne deluje održivo. I glavni likovi nisu baš nešto naročito izdefinisani. Jedino mačkopas odskače... Trojčica, ali ne odustajem od Lesingove... Verovatno sam počeo sa pogrešnom knjigom :)

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this decades ago and the images of tribes of people forming on the pavements and then migrating on together has stayed with me. After ‘it’ happens,(never explained but clearly a breakdown in society and systems, complete separation of government and elites from the masses) the narrator, an older woman observes the changes in civilisation from her window. Emily, a young teenage girl is put in her care and gradually becomes part of the new gangs of youth learning to cope in this new world. This is an interesting view of a post collapse dystopia. The mysterious otherworld on the other side of the flat’s wall is the unconscious? some other timeline? death? I’m not sure but I enjoyed the reread.

[Jacob Appel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doris Lessing's "The Memoirs of a Survivor" is the ideal novel to read when the threat of social disorder looms (whether it be international terrorism, environmental disruption, war or pandemic). The volume tells the story of a middle class Englishwoman who finds herself unexpected caregiver for an adolescent girl during the worsening aftermath of societal breakdown. Although a dystopian novel, the loss of order occurs more insidiously than in Saramago's "Blindness," the injustices less stark at first than in "The Handmaid's Tale." Maybe that is Lessing's gift: Horrors aren't part of a larger scheme in her writing; rather, they just happen. In "The Golden Notebook," she writes of the "long littleness" of life; even her dystopia reflects this sentiment. This is not a novel about human depravity, but about how human misfortune evolves.

That is not to say the narrative is not without drama or genuine emotion. The girl's love for her pet, Hugo, which may prove canine or feline, captures the potential power of innocence even during calamity. And the narrator's growing maternal feelings for the girl's welfare generate strong tension as we also grow concerned for her safety. Life somehow occurs even amidst the crisis, much as it does in Anne Frank's diary or in Kantor's "Andersonville."

Lessing's insights about mid-20th century motherhood are also piercing and unsettling. Of the girl's mother, she writes: "She was like a child, that tall, solid, confident woman; she needed understanding as a child does. She sat looking inward into the demands of her days and nights. No one else was there, for her, because she felt she was talking to herself: they could not hear, or would not. She was trapped, but did not know why she felt this, for her marriage and her children were what she personally had wanted and had aimed for--what society had chosen for her. Nothing in her education or experience had prepared her for what she did in fact feel, and she was isolated in her distress and her bafflement, sometimes even believing she might perhaps be ill in some way." Or Lessing's comment on Emily's feeling for her teenage lover, Gerald: "She knew love like a fever, to be suffered, to be lived through: 'falling in love' was an illness to be endured, a trap that might lead her to betray her own nature, her good sense, and her real purpose. It was not a door to anything but itself: not a key to living...." Not exactly the stuff of romance, but certainly worth reflection.

This novel can be read as an inspiration or as a warning. It contains non-traditional elements, possibly magical, that may surprise Lessing readers. But the careful prose and rich ideas will not surprise them at all. More than a century after her birth, she remains one of the smartest and most eclectic British novelist, a voice almost timeless in its prescience.

[hawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed this novel, even more than I thought I might 🙂😃😁 I don't know if it was simply a short read, or because it was a compelling one, that I finished it almost within a day 😁😊


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set in and around a flat, in a small block, in a town, the novel takes place partly in that relatively small tangible world... and also in part in a parallel hidden world and time behind the walls. I enjoyed the easy and almost casual surreality of the other rooms that open up mentally, and perhaps physically 💛 and how the girl Emily comes from there - is she real? is she something the main characters mind creates??

"yes, it was all impossible, but after all I had accepted the impossible..."

and Hugo, Emily's dog who looks like a cat. blurring realities again 😺


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Emily - Hugo and our narrator watch the child become a young woman.
the walls open occasionally and our narrator watches scenes from Emily's childhood 💙

tho much of their relationship, and Emily's development, takes place in the tangible consensus reality.


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the sensitive and taboo subject of 'underage' sex (and what would be considered statutory rape by an adult of a child) is well handled - not sensationalised, presented as part of the new 'normal', yet also commented on in a way that highlights it for the issue it is (without making the child feel bad/shame). it initially surprised me that the author went there, but I think she very deliberately did so, and well 🙂

and in the two generations of women, a woman and child finding themselves in familial relationship, various gendered, class and racialised issues are explored, using the two perspectives (the two representing before and now). I liked how the older woman, who is seemingly randomly given charge of Emily by her father, treats what becomes the young woman as a young woman, rather than child - recognising both the different experiences, and meeting her within them 💚


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migrations, encampments, shifting households... our narrator's small household weathers them... shifts to accommodate and release others 🧡


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the wall opens again as winter and the novel closes... and our narrator sees the person she's waited for... Emily and Hugo walk quickly, following her across the threshold... Gerald and his children too...

"and they all followed quickly, on after the others, as the last walls dissolved."

❤


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there were one or two dialogues that felt very slightly like they were vehicles for political monologue, but mostly the writing was conversational, relaxed, and engages us thru the characters and events 💛

as a novel first published in 1974, it still holds alot of current relevance wrt climate and social issues, and systems and power structures that are breaking down. and it nicely centres the impacts and responses of ordinary people, and doesn't give much space to the old authoritarian structures 🙂😃😁


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I think this is probably one of my favourite novels by Doris Lessing so far (tho I'm still slowly reading 'Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta', and greatly enjoying that). and as I come to know her writings more, I notice her adventures and/or experiments in structure - how some of her novels are very deliberately and clearly structured, and what that adds to the content and how the story takes shape, and is told and received ♥


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accessed as an RNIB talking book, well read by Pauline Munro 🙂

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. It was post-apocalyptic, but without an apocalypse. It was just society falling apart totally dramatically and how people were quite unable to come to grips with that. It was interesting to see how people adapted and carried on, how things changed slowly and were accepted as just another part of normal. It felt so painfully real. The book consisted of three intermingled parts, the destruction of society, the growing up of Emily and the world behind the walls. Of the three I thought the growing of Emily was the least interesting. Like the falling apart of society it was told very realisticly, how a 12 year old girl was able to adapt in her new society and spend her teenage years while things fell apart, but I did find at times it got a bit dull, perhaps because it was so ordinary and believable. The fantastical element came with the main characters “trips behind the walls”. As things deteriorated outside she spent more time in a fantasy world that she was able to visit for hours at a time, sometimes there were huge empty rooms, sometimes lots of destruction, and sometimes scenes from Emily’s life. These bits really reminded me a lot of the Yellow Wallpaper. I didn’t think it was obvious how much they should be viewed as mental illness and how much they should be viewed as reality. They made a definite contrast to the realistic portrayal of the world falling apart. I really enjoyed this book, even more than the other books of hers I read, and I definitely want to read more of Lessing’s fiction now. I’m hoping to find a nice cheap copy of the archives book next.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hrm. This book really didn't grab me. It's well written and describes a very believable not-far-future dystopia as civilization slowly decays, and I found that believable and interesting. However, Lessing also has a weird and never-explained parallel world that occasionally opens up, appearing through the wall of the narrator's flat. At first it seems like a heavy-handed metaphor but by the end of the book it seems as if it's genuinely real, a parallel dimension into which they can escape. This and various other parts of the story seemed to be deliberately NOT explained in any coherent way, which I found very annoying.

As a description of a future dystopia it's good. As an actual story with a coherent and interesting plot, it's lacking. And the characters aren't particularly sympathetic, nor is there much to the book OTHER than the description of the descent into dystopia. I still might have decided I liked it if the ending had been different, but the ending was just an abrupt, unexplained deus ex machina. Disappointing and just not the type of book I particularly enjoy. I prefer a bit more direction and form to my fiction, I guess. Overall: meh.

[Quin Herron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot explain why I love The Memoirs of a Survivor, at least not as directly as I can explain my love for the work of James Joyce or Márquez. The story of an unnamed protagonist who takes care of a mysterious girl in the aftermath of an unexplained fall of civilization is not for those who like to have their questions answered. It is for those who like to gather new sets of questions. It approaches human nature without drama, talking about acts of inexplicable violence in the same way as acts of duty, responsibility, and love. In this way, the novel focuses on what cannot be explained, what can only be cared for, loved, and enjoyed.

[Renklikalem · Rating 4 out of 5]

biraz yavas akan ancak karanlik ve oldukca gercekci bir distopya. iletisim eksikligine, kadin erkek iliskilerine, insanoglunun icindeki az gelismis -gelismemis!- ilkel yaratiga, demokrasiye, ozgurluge, yonetenlere-yonetilenlere, dunyayi ve kaynaklarini kudurmuscasina ve umarsizca tuketisimize dair korkutan dusunduren muazzam bir kitap.

uslubuna ve diline doyamadigimi ayrica belirtmek istiyorum. doris lessing ilk kez okuyorum. gec kalmis bir tanisma oldugunu soylemeliyim.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel compelled to give this remarkable novel five stars for it's sheer audacity and total unwillingness to compromise, that is to say to infect itself, with anything resembling literature--much less realism or any such strategy. No, Memoirs of a Survivor is neither real nor fantasy, if that's the opposite of realism in standard literary jargon. Obviously I'm quite impressed with Lessing's ability to conjure up a whole new beast out of the limbs and organs with which we mad scientists also known as authors are always stitching together--but to much more predictable and obvious end normally.

This is not to say that I enjoyed Memoirs of a Survivor or found it in any way easy to read. Its hybrid grafting of literary elements, its non-sequiturs, meandering and long paragraphs, and seemingly ad hoc shifts between a kind of realistic dystopian world and what the novel itself calls the 'personal' (sic)--scenes in which walls vanish opening up rooms in which one finds the past, scenes, and even labyrinths--was all very disquieting and hard to follow. Which is both a remarkable achievement in a novel but also off-putting at the same time as it was just so unexpectedly original yet acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

As far as I can make out Memoirs of a Survivor is about change. On the outside--literally, outside of the apartment/flat where our narrator lives--the world appears to be regressing. The novel depicts a city falling into ruin as its inhabitants shuck off centuries of culture and social mores to return to nomadic living, barter, cave dwelling, and even cannibalism and utter barbarity. On the inside, our narrator is given a ward, a girl named Emily, whom she watches change into a young woman just as the outside world either collapses or de-evolves, as it were, or merely changes, depending upon how you, the reader, want to see it. The narrator remains fascinatingly dry and concrete in her descriptions, not editorializing enough really to tell us how we're supposed to feel about these changes. Also, behind the walls of the aforesaid apartment/flat, in the 'personal,' the narrator sees, experiences, and even seeks Emily's past (I can only assume) as well as other fugitive figures whose significance is also not explained in any logical or didactic way.

On the good side I feel as if the narrator leads us through her own experiences and thus we are her much more than we are the narrators of most novels because we only share the experience, are seldom asked to share her thoughts or interpretations of the things she shares with us. On the bad side, this is frustrating to a reader who usually takes a kind of subservient role to such narrators, expecting to be told what to think of the things they share with us. Therefore the reading of this novel is, in a narrative sense, just as disconcerting as it would be to live through the end of civilization as we know it, or to accompany a young woman through puberty, or to have all of our cultural mores stripped away and to see a whole new set of norms for human interaction form before our very eyes.

I found this novel both exhilarating and terrifying. (I also read it at a bad time--my two roommates just moved out and I find myself rather too alone, afraid to look out the window, for the novel has become my main reality in this vacuum and I'm almost afraid the world outside is the one I just finished reading about.)

[Maricruz · Rating 2 out of 5]

No tengo la menor idea de por dónde quería ir Doris Lessing con este libro. Podría aventurar alguna hipótesis, buscarle el simbolismo al gato (que no se comporta como un gato ni por asomo), o a las visiones que la narradora enfoca tras una de las paredes de su casa. O podría quedarme en la confesión de no haberme enterado de nada, si es que algo había de lo que enterarse. Me quedo con esta última opción, porque la otra me da muchísima pereza, que es lo que me producen, cada vez más, las obras de ficción que parecen pensadas para organizar un seminario sobre ellas (y ya sé que a Lessing eso le horrorizaba, lo deja claro en su prólogo a El cuaderno dorado). De modo que dejando aparte sobre qué trata esta novela, diré qué me ha parecido cómo está escrita: Memorias de una superviviente parece una colcha o unas cortinas cosidas con cuatro o cinco retales diferentes. Y ninguno de esos tejidos pega ni con cola con los demás, o no lo suficiente. De la misma manera que con una colcha o unas cortinas, al cabo de un tiempo te acostumbras a esa disparidad y ya no te llama tanto la atención. Pero un día, a saber por qué, las miras bien y piensas «Joder, vaya engendro». Eso mismo pasa al llegar a la página final de Memorias de una superviviente. Que no es mal final, pero en lo desconcertante que resulta vuelve a recordar la incómoda heterogeneidad de lo anterior. No creo que aquí esté la mejor Doris Lessing, la ganadora de «all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one». Hay que buscarla en otra parte.

[Seyfettin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dünyanın sonunun gelmesine ramak kala, insanların daha iyi hava, su, gıda vb için göç ettiği bir ortamda yaşadıkları şehri terk eden bir aile giderken kızını ve kızın evcil hayvanını size teslim etse ve almaktan başka çareniz olmasa ne yapardınız? Bir de normal olan her şeyin yok olduğu bir ortamda?

Birebir olmasa bile bu değişimi kendi hayatlarımızda görmek gayet mümkün. Dünya bizim doğduğumuz dünya değil artık -her bakımdan- hatta ebeveynlerimizin doğduğu dünya da çok uzaklarda kaldı.

Toplumdaki normlar, kurallar, eğitim, dil, gelenek, kültür aktarımı, çocuk yetiştirme ve yaşam tarzı gibi konular üzerine düşünmemizi sağlayan bir kitap. Yazarın en popüler kitabı bu değil, en popülerini de okuyacağım ama sevenlerine tavsiye ederim.

"Bunun anlamını, kendisi de çocuk sahibi olmadan
hiç kimse bilemez, öyle değil mi? Elimden gelen tek şey bu koşuşturmaya, yarışa ayak uydurmaya çalışmak; bırakın çocuklara görmeleri gereken ilgiyi göstermeyi, yiyeceklere, öğün ardına öğün hazırlamaya bile zor yetişiyorum. Emily ona ayırdığım vakit den fazlasına gereksiniyor, biliyorum, ama öyle talepkâr, öyle zor bir çocuk ki, oldum olası beni tüketmiştir, sürekli ona okumamı, onunla oynamamı ister, oysa yemek pişiriyorum, yiyecek siparişi veriyorum, bütün gün bunlarla meşgulüm, eh, siz de bilirsiniz, yapılması gerekenlere hiç vakit kalmaz; bu çocuğa ayıracak zamanım yok, işte o kadar. Geçen yıl bir süreliğine bir kız tuttum, ama yarardan çok zararı oldu, gerçekten, bir de onların sorunlarıyla, bunalımlarıyla uğraşman gerekiyor, bir de baktım, kıza da Emily kadar zaman harcıyorum; tamam, öğle yemeklerinden sonra bir saat kendime ayırabiliyor, azıcık ayaklarımı uzatabiliyordum, ama bırakın ders çalışmayı, kitap okuyacak halim dahi kalmıyordu, çocukların insanı ne hale getirdiğini kimse bilemez, hayır, tahmin bile edemez; çocuklar insanın canına okuyor, ben eski ben değilim ve ne yazık ki bunun fazlasıyla farkındayım."

[mai ahmd · Rating 4 out of 5]

تجري أحداث الرواية في إحدى المدن ,( لم يكن لها اسما كما لم تُمنح بطلة الرواية اسما )
هذه المدينة من المدن التي نالها نصيب من آثار حرب ما ( المكان غير معروف ) وكما يحدث في الحروب غابت عنها الخدمات الضرورية للحياة , الماء , الكهرباء , الطعام , مما نتج عنه رحيل أغلب سكانها بينما سيطرت العصابات التي تكونت من المراهقين والأطفال على الشوارع فانتشرت الفوضى واستبيحت المساكن والمرافق وعمّ العنف , بطلة الرواية هي أنثى متوسطة العمر انزوت في شقتها ، مترددة في قرار مصيرها مايحدث أنها فجأة تُكلف برعاية إميلي الطفلة التي تبلغ الثانية عشرة فتضطر لتأجيل قرارها بالرحيل , تقضي بطلة الرواية وقتها في مراقبة إيميلي الطفلة التي كبرت في زمن قياسي لتصبح أنثى لديها أصدقاء شبان وحبيب من إحدى عصابات الشوارع !
الرواية زمنها ثلاث سنوات وقد مزجت فيها الكاتبة ما بين الواقعية والرمزية , بطلة الرواية تعيش عالمين عالم داخلي حدوده شقتها والجدار الذي يفصل بينها وبين عالم آخر من اللاوعي يأخذها لمشاهد بعيدة في الماضي بعضها متعلق بها وآخر بغيرها وهناك مشاهد كثيرة تتعلق بالطفلة إيميلي وهذه المشاهدات التي تظهر لها من خلف الجدار كانت تبدو كشريط سينمائي يعبر بها إلى أزمان بعيدة في أحيان كثيرة كان يخيل لي أن إميلي وتلك المرأة ليسوا سوى شخصا واحد أو لعلها كانت ترى نفسها في تلك الفتاة التي تمتلىء حيوية وهي تبدأ حياتها بينما غابت هي شمسها تلك الطفلة التي تعلقت بها بطلة الرواية ولكن لم يكن الأمر ظاهرا إلا في مقدار أحاديثها الداخلية ومراقبتها المستمرة لها من بعيد
تعود بعدها المرأة إلى الواقع وتراقب من نافذتها ما يجري في الشوارع , وما يجري في الشوارع لم يكن سوى تصرفات بوهيمية فماذا ننتظر حين يغيب القانون والنظام ليبدو الأمر اشبه بسيادة قانون الغاب ..
أما أسلوب درويس فهو رصين جدا على الرغم من عنف بعض الأحداث إلا أنه فيه الكثير من التأملات في فلسفة الحياة , كما إن الحوارات التي دارت بين إيميلي والمرأة هي حوارات هادئة تستحق التأمل وإن كانت فيها المرأة متحفظة لخوفها على مشاعر الفتاة الصغيرة
الرواية ليس بها أقسام ولا فصول إنما سرد متواصل حتى النهاية
الخلاصة :
هذا النوع من الروايات يجذبني وأجده مشوق جدا

[Nada Muhammad · Rating 1 out of 5]

من الكتب التي لم استطع اكمالها . اشعر ان اكثر من نصف الكتاب كتب فقط لملئ الفراغ فيه! وكأن الكاتبه تحاول اختبار مدى فلسفتها او مدى ثرثرتها!! لم افهم ماتقول في كثير من المقاطع لدرجه اني اقفز بين السطور لأعثر على جمله واحده مفيده او تتعلق بالقصه!!!! انها قصه تخلو من القصه نفسها.. لا انصح بتضييع الوقت في قرائته

[Iarina · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte care m-a cucerit din primele pagini si prima carte citita scrisa de Doris Lessing; clar, nu va fi ultima.
O lume șubredă in care fiecare supraviețuiește cum poate, o lume despre care credeam ca e dominată de razboi, insă este ceva mai rău care "veghează" asupra realitații din carte.
Emily- un copil devenit adult inainte de vreme; femeia care are grijă de Emily- un adult fragil care caută răspunsuri dincolo de perete.
Triburi de oameni care migrează spre o speranță palidă, care poate sa dispară ca fumul in vânt.
Toate dominate de o atmosfera apăsătoare, încărcata de nostalgia vremurilor trecute.
Copii din carte m-au trimis cu gândul la "Împăratul Muștelor". Inca o data se creionează (însă într-un mod mai blând decat in "Imparatul Mustelor") modul in care poate sa domine violența în niște copilași.
În incheiere, o sa va las un fragment care mi-a plăcut:
" Observam şi priveam. Vedeam o femeie matură, o femeie care s-a săturat de toate, dar de la care se mai cere încă, tot mai e rugată să dea: o astfel de femeie este într-adevăr generoasă, vistieria și rezervoarele ei sunt întotdeauna pline și împărțite altora. lubeşte – o, da, însă undeva în ea este o oboseală mortală. Le-a cunoscut pe toate și nu mai vrea nimic - Insă ce poate să facă ? Se cunoaşte pe sine - ochii bărbaților și băieților spun asta – drept izvor - dacă nu este asta, atunci nu e nimic. Aşa că se gândeşte totuşi, încă nu şi-a pierdut acea iluzie. Ea dăruiește. Dăruiește. Însă cu această oboseală ținută sub control și ascunsă.."

[яσвεят · Rating 2 out of 5]

قصه ی راوی ناشناس و امیلی و جرالد به ایستگاه پایان خودش رسید
جهانی که نویسنده متصور شده یک‌ فضای پیچیده است
دنیایی وحشی که امیلی قراره داخل اون بزرگ بشه
با گروه پسر های خیابانی هویت خودش رو پیدا کنه
شهر رو توی مایه های دیستوپیا بیان می‌کنه این وسط یک دیوار هست که راوی ما هر از چند گاهی حوصله اش سر می‌ره داخل خونه
به آن ورود می‌کنه و بعد فضا مکان زمان جهان زندگی موازی خودش رو رویت می‌کنه
خلاصه کار عجیبیه دو ستاره دادم چون نویسنده از شما میخواد
تا افراد کمی از این کتاب مطلع بشن تا حذف هر یک آسان گردد!!

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surreal and disturbing narrative exploring worldwide social disentegration from the calm, centred perspective of a middle aged woman caring for a mysterious child

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doris Lessing for the most part made her name as a mainstream novelist, while frequently dipping her toes into science-fiction. The most famous example is probably the "Canopus in Argos" space opera series, but she also wrote the dystopian/post-apocalyptic novel "Memoirs of a Survivor" which uses a lot of those genres' basic building blocks in interesting ways.

The plot follows an unnamed middle-aged woman (who narrates the book in first person) living in a high-rise apartment complex, where she takes care of an orphaned 12-year old girl named Emily and a stray cat named Hugo. All this takes place in a dystopian near future where society slowly gradually falls apart while nomadic gangs of teenage delinquents take over the de facto power on the street. The main conflict revolves around Emily falling in love with Gerald, the leader of one of the nomadic street gangs, as she goes through puberty - while the unnamed protagonist adapts her lifestyle to surviving in a world where less and less of a functional industrial society operates. We also get a look into the lives of her neighbours, including a respected university professor and his family, as well as the squatters who move into the apartment complex as more of its previous inhabitants abandon the building. (I wonder if J. G. Ballard was inspired by this when writing "High Rise", which came out a year later?)

Had "Memoirs of a Survivor" been a typical dystopian story, the viewpoint character would probably be either Emily or Gerald following their coming-of-age (as in "Akira" or "A Clockwork Orange"). Perhaps one of the police officers trying desperately to maintain the state's crumbling power. (as in "Mad Max" or "Robocop") Instead, "The Memoirs of a Survivor" is narrated by someone who would in all likelihood be a background character in most other dystopian novels, just attempting to stay alive as she adapts her lifestyle to the changing circumstances. The bulk of the page count is spent on either the old woman's inner thought processes as she philosophises over a world where she feels less and less at home, or building an atmosphere of desolate austere beauty and decrepit elegance, than on traditional narrative. This approach to writing could easily get tedious, so hat off to Lessing for making "The Memoirs of a Survivor" such a gripping read. There are few other science-fiction novels I have read, most of them by J. G. Ballard, that capture the sense of what everyday life must feel like as all the basic foundations of a modern society slowly but inexorably crumble around an ordinary and unexceptional person.

Something else I appreciate is that just by showing people's everyday lives, Lessing makes it clear throughout the novel that she put a lot of thought into how an urban society would look after industrial high-tech civilisation collapses. This is where her characterisation of Gerald, the teenage gang leader turned warlord, really shines: In a typical post-apocalyptic novel he would probably be a villainous figure like Lord Humongous in "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" or The Duke in "Escape From New York". Instead, Gerald becomes one of the most heroic characters here as he genuinely tries to create a functional society out of the old world's ashes and the story is very honest about the problems of organisation that his gang-turned-nomad tribe runs into along the way especially when a literal adolescent is at its head. Imagine Shotaro Kaneda from "Akira" trying to build a self-sufficient independent society and you probably have the best idea. That all this remains in the background and out of focus I find intriguing, that Lessing manages to put so much work into the supporting characters and their arcs as the main thrust of the book is a middle-aged woman trying to make sense of a world where she feels less and less at home and her adoptive daughter choosing a path in life which she herself disapproves of. Reading between the lines, "The Memoirs of a Survivor" reads like an allegory for Lessing herself coming to accept the world changing around her and younger generations choosing lifestyles she found repulsive on a personal level by realising that none of this needs to represent society becoming objectively worse.

People who enjoy dystopian science-fiction as much as I do, and would like to read a novel that uses many of the basic elements of the genre in new and interesting ways, would do wisely to read this.

[Sally Flint · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a most disturbing book. Set sometime in the future where civilisation has all but broken down we are shown what the remnants of society has become through the eyes of a middle aged woman. She, though, is only half in reality and reverts through a wall to explore earlier times and memories. The key person in the story is a teenage girl called Emily who was brought to the house for the narrator to care for. We never learn her name, which is perhaps significant. Emily is resourceful, young and fall hopelessly in love with Gerald. He is a mass of contradictions, he takes advantage of his powerful position, is in effect a child abuser, but is also sympathetic and caring. The normal rules of society clearly do not apply. The beauty of the book is Lessing's wonderful imaginative capturing of real life as it could be. It is frightening and uncannily real. We never learn where Emily came from and are left to surmise. The ending is peculiar. We can only assume the worst as we are given a final 'non-reality' chapter after the feral children have visited and perhaps finally attacked. Our norms are questioned, our beliefs are at time almost mocked and ridiculed. We explore 'It' the danger that it is out there, and 'it' is presented as the new norm, one without language proficiency, basic necessities, and a barrel full of resourcefulness. Hard to classify the book. As a reader I am left, shocked, confused, scared, but glad to have gone through the journey. Doris Lessing truly was not only a prolific, but a great writer.

[Afaf Ammar · Rating 3 out of 5]

"وأصبح النهار طويلاً وأخذ الربيع يشفي الأشجار المجروحة "

16.06.2021

[Mafi Zis Amețita Aka Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prima întâlnire cu autoarea asta foarte greu am pătruns în poveste dar ce-a făcut în a doua jumătate a cărții cu tema principală (abandonul, copiilor)mi-a răvășit sufletul mi-a transmis atât de mult mi-a plăcut enorm de mult cum a ales să își scrie povestea,i think y need all your books❤️

[مروان البلوشي · Rating 4 out of 5]

تاريخ القراءة الأصلي : ٢٠٠٧
تمزقات الحضارة بعيون المتعبين العاجزين..أسلوب محافظ وبريطاني جدا..يخاطبنا كلنا

[Wouter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really captivated by this book for the first 60 pages or so, but after a while it became a bit more of the same and I just found it tedious to get through.

[Christopher Roth]

Okay, this is my first Doris Lessing, and I must say I'm not impressed. Apparently a lot of her books are sort of like this one, and I'm starting to see a pattern, when you also take into account J. M. Coetzee's books, specifically: white southern African writers often go for these dehistoricized, lean, spare, high-concept parables as a way of exploring human brutality. This kind of stuff is just red meat to comp. lit. majors and Nobel committees, and I'm sure that the writers themselves feel that they are bravely, unflinchingly staring the reality of humanity's dark side in the face and grappling with its moral quandaries as a way of atoning for—or at least acknowledging—their complicity by birth in apartheid and colonialism. But I don't buy it. Literature that is not situated in time and place is literature with the oxygen sucked out of it. Lessing and Coetzee's books don't have real people in them, and you can't really explore human nature and one's own complicity in evil through parables that contain no psychological complexity and ambiguity. Compare, for example, Huckleberry Finn, which, granted, is full of unexamined assumptions and lots else to make modern readers queasy—but that's what makes it a great book, and a genuine, real, compassionate attempt, failed or not, to grapple with the author's own role at the top of a power structure. The fact that it's ethically, aesthetically, and psychologically messy is how you can tell that Twain is really struggling with something as honestly as he can. Books like The Memoirs of a Survivor are the opposite: you feel like Lessing is running from a history—both personal history and geopolitical and racial history—that she doesn't know how to write about honestly. She retreats into parable. The fact that the racialized Other in this book takes the form of an Irish family in London is laughable. Deal with it, Doris!



This book also compares unfavorably with another recent book about a filial relationship in a bleak, post-apocalyptic future, Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." McCarthy sketches out his imagined future deftly and concisely, fills it with real people, and conveys a powerful and totalizing vision of human nature. Lessing, by contrast, has not thought out her future in any political or sociological detail, fills it with stick figures, and seems to be hiding from the real issues—political, racial, and psychological.



Someone try to convince me that it's worth picking up another book of hers.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a work of speculative fiction that only Doris Lessing could write. The narrator, whose memoir it is, describes a near (near to 1970s though still plausible today) distopian future. This future is not quite apocalyptic - for the 1%/bourgeoisie life goes on more-or-less as usual. But for everyone else, the order of things gradually disintegrates over the course of the narrative. The power is cut off and then water. People move increasingly to barter economy and theft; to intentional communities and roving gangs. Gardens are grown on roofs; livestock kept in old hotels.

In many ways, the novel is a commentary of the challenges inherent in establishing anarchistic communities, the way we bring our ideas about hierarchy (especially of gender and age) with us even into radically new worlds despite all best intentions. It also considers how to reconcile an element of violent disorder with a vision of peaceful anarchy/intentional community, as Gerald and Emily deal with gangs of increasingly feral and animalistic children. What to do when no sense of reason remains?

The flip side to the feral children's violent lack of reason is the narrator's potentially liberatory lack of reason. While in many ways this novel shares elements of other urban distopias, it also includes a more magical element, which is that periodically the walls open up and the narrator can see some parallel universe. Perceived towards the end of the novel as a "yellow stain" on the wallpaper, this opening up read to me as an homage to Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

It is unclear whether Emily and Hugo (neither cat nor dog) came from this parallel universe, or whether there are multiple universes and timeframes the narrator has access to. We do know she has the ability to see Emily's past as well as diverse, mostly unpeopled scenes of either utopian beauty or disorder and decay. Are these visions the growing madness of the narrator, increasingly confined to her rooms like Gilman's protagonist? Or is her ability to access these parallel worlds what will ultimately save Emily, Gerald, Hugo, and maybe even the feral children whom Gerald refuses to believe are beyond redemption? In true modernist style, we are left to our own conclusions.

[Abi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book. It might have something to do with the fact that I read it all in one go, which tends to completely absorb you in the world, but I got really caught up in it. Finally, a dystopia which owes nothing explicit to Nineteen Eighty-Four, something original! A modern, British dystopia that actually addresses contemporary issues. Reading this, I imagine, was like reading 1984 within Orwell's time. Frightening because it seems so starkly possible, so relevent to the zeitgeist. I couldn't believe that this was written in the 70s; Lessing is almost prophetic in her treatment of children and teenagers in Britain. She really has an eye for the fears and dystopian undercurrents in modern British society, and the ways in which these could feasibly develop, given certain conditions.
The premise of collapse of infrastructure, of the disintegration of modern comforts: electricity, running water, etc, perhaps isn't really explained well enough for it to be as truly chilling as Nineteen Eighty-Four. But at the same time there are strands so recognisably British that the vision really seems a lot closer to home. For example, the idea of the government continuing to act 'as normal', everything going on 'as normal' in such a farcical way whilst society collapses into anarchy is so utterly British.
The questioning of the value of 'civilisation' also interested me. There are almost Proudhonist elements of socialist utopia, the myth of going back to 'a simpler age', anarchism in which everyone has a defined role, a return to a prehistorical natural order. Is this a return to true human nature, or is it an erosion of humanity?
It's a dystopia for today, one that's actually making a comment about the society that we live in, which is what made it so fascinating for me.