In Pursuit of the English: A Documentary

by Doris Lessing

In Pursuit of the English is a first-class novelist's account of the lusty, quarrelsome, unscrupulous, funny, pathetic, full-blooded life in a working-class rooming house. It is a shrewd and unsentimental picture of Londoners you've probably never met or even read about - though they are the real English.

In swift, barbed style, in high, hard, farcical writing that is eruptively funny, Doris Lessing records the joys and terrors of everyday life. The truth of her perception shines through the pages of a work that makes a permanent addition to writing about the English.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Nobel Prize, Autobiography, British Literature, African Literature

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

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

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book which is about nothing more than life in a bombed-out house in a poorer district of London has the best ending of any book I've ever read. I don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say it includes the virtues of haggis versus mutated mink as reared by (respectively) Ben Nevis This is a mountain in Scotland and the Dalai Lama. And turpentine. They were never mentioned in the entire rest of the book but actually make perfect sense. Only a genius could write like this. No wonder Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize.
_____

Notes as I was reading the book.

This is just like watching reality tv. You know it's been somewhat scripted but you can't tell where or how and it's fascinating. If you like that sort of thing, you are really going to enjoy this book. It is as well-written as you would expect from a Nobel Prize winner for literature, but it's as light as a pot-boiler you can curl up with, reading as you dip into a big box of chocolates.

All the action takes place in a boarding house in London. It is mostly the interaction between Doris, the blowsy landlady who cooks for them all brilliant Italian feasts once a week, the landlady's family, their mutual friend, a sniffy-nosed woman with boyfriend problems and a con artist who may be telling the truth at times. No one can tell. and I can't tell if this is Doris Lessing's autobiographical account of when she first came to London or she invented the whole thing, or it is somewhere in between.

No matter. This is just so enjoyable I don't want to read it too fast. I want it to last.
__________

Notes about the author. Before she gets to EnglandThis has started off well! Doris was born in Iran and moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) at 6 where she grew up. She thought her father was quite mad forever writing letters (never posted) to the newspapers on such subjects as magneticism, vegetables and the sun's rays influence on civilized people. But at 17, when she went to England she found that he was just quite typical of the English and would have fitted in without a murmer from anyone.

She also says that her mother was Irish, Scottish and English and would describe herself as Irish or Scottish but never English. Everyone Irish, Scottish and Welsh will quite understand and sympathise with that, but I don't know if Americans would but the English might sneer. Only joking.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny in parts and who knew a story could be developed from a boarding house in post WW11 London damaged by bombs. Lessing observations and characterization of the people living in the house in working class London is superb. She was definitely a fish out of water.

Rose a cynical Londoner with a big heart. Flo a lonely scarrerbrain with sublime cooking skills. Dan a born capitalist who is unscrupulous and simmering with anger about perceived injustices. Bobby a wannabe conman and charmer. All taking place under one roof.

Lessing starts the story with her in a rundown boarding house in Cape Town awaiting weeks for her ship to London. Then on arrival in London her desperate search to find affordable and livable accommodation. Then she meets Rose.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone napping at HarperPerennial - the back blurb references a prostitute named "Miss Priest." Her name in the book is Miss Privet.

[Marisol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este libro confirma que Doris Lessing es una escritora excepcional, ya que transforma hechos triviales en vitales, sucesos familiares en eventos memorables.

Navegando entre la autobiografía, las memorias, y auto ficción novelada nos regala un relato disperso, sencillo, doméstico que con su pluma se transforma en algo delicioso que no se puede parar de leer.

Conocemos una Doris común, antes de unirse al Olimpo de los escritores, una mujer blanca nacida en Iran de padres ingleses, viviendo desde los 5 años en Zimbabue. Acompañamos a una Doris madre soltera que se embarca en un viaje hacia Londres, recorremos con ella las calles, somos testigos de sus vicisitudes para encontrar donde vivir, sus relaciones con sus vecinos, como les digo cosas comunes y corrientes pero que contadas por ella cobran fuerza y relevancia.

Un Londres bajo el ojo crítico, una patria desconocida pero que entraña posibilidades, personas en su mayoría inmigrantes que de manera irónica son los primeros que conoce.

Si nunca has leído a Doris, este libro te demostrará porque hay que leerla, y si ya la has leído con mayor razón lo disfrutarás.

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I found this book a bit slow - I had not read a Doris Lessing book in many years. But it grew on me, and I began to understand that the English working class she pursued was the population in the boarding house she came to live in. The women of the house, including the author, essentially became a family - helping each other often reluctantly. But they also developed mutual respect even as some disliked and disapproved of each other. The men seemed almost to be comic relief. The description of the trip to court had me laughing aloud.

The book showed how those "working class" women of the post WW2 era, in Britain (but also in much of postwar allied Europe), regarded a home - an actual house or apartment - as their aim in adult life. This, combined with what Lessing showed to be a natural conservatism of the working poor of the time, was beautifully represented in story form in this book. I particularly enjoyed the book as I could identify many of the traits - lovable as well as occasionally unpleasant - in my Danish and Swedish grandparents, which were very similar to those of Lessing's characters.

[cellomerl · Rating 3 out of 5]

“We should all be kind to each other. If we was all kind to each other all over the world it would be different, wouldn’t it now?”

Apparently there’s nothing honourable about most people. They’re mostly all out for themselves.

I won’t forget the evicted old couple anytime soon. I nearly cried. Dementia was not mentioned directly, but there it was, in all its turd-like glory.

And there are two pages of delightful nonsense conversation that would make Edward Lear envious.

How did a woman alone in 1949 have a young child and no questions asked? And where, oh where was her little boy all through 95% of this book? He was like a ghost.

[Ming · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this - I think this is the first Doris Lessing book that I can honestly say I found to be quite funny. I laughed when Doris first meets a woman, and she thinks that the woman is quite glamourous, "like a film star" and also a sensible woman, before someone abruptly asks Doris what she was doing "talking to that whore."

I don't know why, but I kept thinking that there was something quite Dickensian about this short autobiographical work - I guess because this wasn't a thematically-driven book but a character driven book. The notion of Englishness sets up the book (and Doris' journey) and while there are interesting thoughts on this along the way as we follow Lessing on her journey (e.g. Rose distinguishing between being a Londoner and being English), it's primarily just a set-up. Had I known this prior to reading the book, I might've been a little let down since I was drawn to this book precisely because I had a lot of complicated feelings about what it meant to be English - I was born in West London, and I grew up in Singapore which is a British ex-colony in Southeast Asia so I was technically English but not really, and I always felt like a stranger in my own house. And Doris was English in the sense that her parents were both technically English but grew up in Southern Rhodesia (i.e. Zimbabwe) so I thought to myself: what better book to read than a book by Doris Lessing that seems to tackle this very issue? But I don't think I cared that much in the end, I just enjoyed the book for what it was.

The characters feel incredibly real to the touch, which is I think trademark Doris Lessing and I've always been impressed by; the writing also is really good, accommodating both the comic moments and "literary" moments well. I quite like the following passage, and it reminded me of an oft-quoted passage in Martha Quest:

Under the roof it was like sitting on top of an anthill, a tall sharp peak of baked earth, that seems abandoned, but which sounds, when one puts one’s ear to it, with a continuous vibrant humming. Even when the door shut, it was not long before the silence grew into an orchestra of sound. Beneath my floor a tap dripped softly all day, in a blithe duet with the dripping of the tap on the landing. Two floors down, where the Skeffingtons lived, was a radio. Sometimes she forgot it when she went to work, and, as the hours passed, the wavelength slipped, so that melodies and voices flowed upwards, blurring and mingling. This sound had for accompaniment the splashing water, like conversation heard through music and dripping rain. In the darkening afternoons I was taken back to a time when I lay alone at night and listened to people talking through several walls, while the rain streamed from the eves. Sometimes it was as if the walls had dissolved, and I was left sitting under a tree, listening to birds talking from branch to branch while the last fat drops of a shower spattered on the leaves, and a ploughman yelled encouragement to his beasts in the field over the hill. Sometimes I put my ear to the wall and heard how, as the trains went past and the buses rocked their weight along the street, shock after shock came up through brick and plaster, so that the solid wail had the fluidity of dancing atoms, and I felt the house, the street, the pavement, and all the miles and miles of houses and streets as a pattern of magical balances, a weightless structure, as if this city hung on water, or on sound. Being alone in that little box of ceiling board and laths frightened me.

Also, this thought struck me: why do novels have to be "great" now? The story told in In Pursuit of the English is pretty simple, the central conflict (i.e. the court case) is pretty simple, all very ordinary yet interesting, but there's nothing ambitious about this book. It has no desire to be great, it doesn't have pretensions to be philosophically profound or be an "everything" book. And I really enjoyed it. I can't help but wonder if there's still a place for books like these, books that are thoughtful and are clearly the work of an intelligent author yet not a book that sits on its haunches, gathering itself to leap for literary greatness.

Finally, I was quite sorry to learn that Rose and Doris' friendship becomes soured after Doris becomes friends with the prostitute Miss Privet. Doris seemed bewildered by this turn of events, and even when recounting her experience retrospectively, she still doesn't seem to have understood why, writing: "Miss Privet's brief stay in the house was to cost me Rose's friendship; I did not understand how deep her feeling was."

When Doris tries to patch things up with Rose, Rose is less than effusive:

I tried to make it up with Rose in all kinds of ways. When I joked, saying: ‘Look, Rose, I’ll wash the cups in disinfectant in front of you,’ she said: ‘That doesn’t make me laugh, dear.’

‘But, Rose,’ I said, ‘have I changed in any way because I was friendly with Miss Privet?’

‘Miss Preevay,’ said Rose, with heavy sarcasm. ‘French, I don’t think.’

‘But she didn’t pretend to be.’

‘It’s no good trying to be friends. I can see you never did really like me.’

‘Then tell me why.’

She hesitated and thought. ‘You know how I felt about Dickie, didn’t you? Well, then.’

‘What’s he got to do with it?’

‘Yes? I made myself cheap with him. I felt bad, and you knew that.’

‘You were very happy.’ I said.

‘Happy?’ she said derisively. ‘Love, you’ll say next. Well. I know just one thing. You were my friend. Then you were a friend to that dirty beast, and that means I’m just as bad as she is, as far as you’re concerned.’

‘But, Rose, I don’t feel like that.’

‘Yes? Well. I feel like it, and that’s what’s important.’

There's a pattern in Doris' behaviour that Rose is reacting to, I think. Doris was fine mixing with people from London, even really unsavoury characters like Mr. McNamara (who was a conman) because she found them fascinating. By making friends with the prostitute Miss Privet, Rose began to feel that her friendship with Doris was just an interaction based on fascination rather than a genuine friendship. Hence: "I can see you never did really like me." Ah me. This makes me slightly sad. I really did like Rose, although it exasperated me to see how silly she was over Dickie.

On a slight tangent, and on a lighter note, I really like Rose saying: "it's enough to make a cat laugh." I think I shall use it in my everyday life more often.

[Ulrika Eriksson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doris Lessing tells about when she finally came to London in 1949, the town of her dreams, after WW2 to live there and how little it met up to her expectations from the beginning. All the streets looked the same. Later on she learned to like London. After a lot of exhaustive searching she at lasts finds a room to rent for herself and her two year old son Peter in a house owned by a sometimes charming but also unhealthy and slightly dysfunctional working class family. She describes the family, the people around them and the other tenants in the house, fascinated and observing with newly arrived eyes. The portrait of Rose, who opens up to her, is kind and gentle. Rose use to come in to Doris´ room in the evenings and sit and talk or just sit quiet and drink tea with lots of sugar in it. The other portraits, of not so very sympathetic people, are nevertheless respectful and often humoristic. Chatty, gossipy Flo with Italian descent is a fantastic cook and not so good mother to Aurora her daughter with husband Dan, a carpenter with violent temper and with a gift of making money. They own the house. The time is before television and the radio is on highest volume down in the kitchen with Flo and Aurora. Everyone smokes. Doris tries her best to write in the chaos of children screaming, carpenters, quarreling neighbors, people coming in to her room uninvited for a chat. In the end of the book you sense a new time is coming. A TV is newly bought and placed in prominent position. Two young guys have moved in and are having a long and funny nonsense conversation with each other with a sense of humor that goes completely beyond Flo and Rose. The dialogue is phenomenal, spot-on, reminding of Monty Python.
Doris Lessing´s portrayals are as usual outstanding and this book is a piece of modern history, anthropology.

[Xinyu Tan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Pursuit of The English is a curious but difficult read. Many times, I failed to empathize with almost everyone's troubles in the story. But how much do I know about the life of the working class, women and the immigrants in England right after WW2? Very little before reading this book.

Lessing has a unique voice. I will read more of Lessing's books. I feel I might eventually understand her.

[Annnn23 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very fun book! I was hooked for 80% of the book, couldn't stop thinking of it. The dialogue and conversations these people have are hilarious. Overall a good time, but I started losing interest towards the end. RIP Doris, I wish I could have seen her in person, she seems like a crazy grandma who everyone loves dearly💔

[Andrea Carolina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Estaba claro que quería leer alguna novela de una autora “mujer” contemporánea. Pero no quería leer una autobiografía y menos una de un premio nobel, pero todas las opciones que me daba el vendedor (que en realidad no sabía mucho al respecto) no me resultaban atrayentes, así que me senté con cinco libros en la mesa de lectura de la librería: dos de mujeres y tres de hombres, al final escogí dos y le dije a mi madre “no sé cual llevar, escoge tu uno”.

Lo que me atrapó de este libro fueron sus primeras páginas realmente divertidas y el hecho de que fuera a ser narrado en Londres: una joven escritora nacida en una colonia inglesa africana se embarca con su pequeño hijo a vivir el supuesto “sueño ingles”. Pero como siempre los sueños no resultan tan placenteros como esa palabra “sueño” suele significarlos. Ni la ciudad Londres resulta tan maravillosa, hermosa y atractiva como se suele pensar, muchísimo menos para un inmigrante.

Así que para mi desgracia y la de la autora protagonista real, Londres y sus habitantes de clase media baja en los años 50s resultan tan desagradables y enfermizos como los de, quizá, cualquier parte del mundo: violencia en las familias, mujeres amargadas y apocadas, separaciones, hijos sin sentido, mala educación, estrechez económica, frustración económica, deshonestidad, injusticia social, injusticias de género, corrupción y ladrones de dinero (o “vivos”) por doquier, sumándole una ciudad en postguerra, con casas semidestruídas, grietas, podredumbres, hambre, gente amargada, viejos olvidados, hijos desaparecidos y amantes o amores muertos en la guerra pasada.

Así, este libro resulta entre miserable y divertido, gracias a la capacidad de la autora de hacernos llegar a un punto donde ya no nos sorprendemos de la podrida humanidad sino que nos reímos de ella y la encontramos hasta a veces tan normal y común, pensando “era lo que se esperaba”. Tanto, que en los últimos acontecimientos personales de mi familia extendida por parte de mi madre, el otro día, almorzando juntas, ya no nos sorprendíamos de las insensateces e incoherencias de los tíos, primos y abuelos, sino que nos reíamos del carácter tragicómico de todo lo que les sucedía.

Por lo general he sido yo una chica bastante criticona, juzgona y llena de prejuicios. Pero últimamente lo he dejado un poco, no por el libro, primero fué la actitud y después el libro. Pero Doris Lessing se da garra literalmente, porque en medio de tanto desastre humano ella no chista ni mu, ni un mínima miserable queja, se quejó un par de veces de ella misma, pero no de los demás que desgracia, ella lo soporta todo, en realidad no debe soportar nada porque no le pasa directamente a ella sino a los que viven en esa casa inglesa en la que le alquilan un cuarto. A mí me sorprende la actitud de Doris siempre tan comprensiva sin ser una idiota a la que se la monten o una consoladora de las desgracias de los demás, ella entiende, no juzga, escucha, sabe cómo mantenerse al margen, sabe cuándo se debe involucrar, osea casi nunca, nunca una palabra de crítica ni de queja para con ellos: una familia absurdamente disfuncional, una mujer que se mete con los tipos menos indicados como por variar y un estafador.

Quizás este libro sea como una patada en la cara para mí: siempre tan juzgona y criticona. Mi madre, que escogió el libro y no tiene idea de que trata, que días me decía “es que uno debe ser amable con la gente”, pues yo pienso, si, uno debe ser amable con la gente si ellos no son antipáticos contigo, pero ser amable no significa ser lambón, ni significa dar MAS de la cuenta en cuanto al buen trato, solo es cuestión de tratar bien a la gente, no juzgar, no criticar y mantenerse al margen, no dar consejos pendejos de lo que deberían o no hacer y si ellos hablan de sus cosas personales, escuchar no más.

En fin, casi boto el libro a las primeras cien páginas, pero después lo retomé y me resultó en medio de su miseria e ironía, pacifico, tranquilo, llevadero, agradable, suave, desestresante, ameno, y al final resultó siendo una pequeña lección de vida. En realidad también lo seguí por mi curiosidad de saber como hace una mujer joven, con un hijo y sin casi dinero, con aspiraciones a ser escritora para arreglárselas en una ciudad tan hostil en la postguerra. Y creo que en definitiva luchar no significa esfuerzos descomunales de inteligencia, trabajo y sufrimiento, quizá luchar solo sea cuestión de tenerse paciencia a uno mismo y a los otros, quererse lo suficiente para hacerse respetar y respetar a los otros. Pero en una cosa no me he equivocado: el que quiere lograr los sueños más personales y pasionales debe ser disciplinado y nunca, pero nunca, pero nunca jamás dejar de creer en lo que se quiere así todos te digan que no vas a lograr nada con ello, así fue Doris Lessing.

[Margarita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a typical Lessing book, neither your typical England. A young woman with her son (Doris Lessing) arrives in London from Africa. And the post-war England is not the England that the readers are used to; it is not posh and respectable, it is not Jane Austen, of course. The author arrives in the city and takes lodging in a very peculiar boarding house - as the story unfolds the readers gets to know all the people living there: a passionate couple, a quarrelling couple, a-not-officially-a-couple-therefore-frowned-upon, children of those couples and a young prim and priggish lady called Rose, who is in love with the "wrong man".
As the majority of Lessing's novels "In Pursuit of the English" is mostly about women, female characters and their lives in the post-war England. And that life was not too easy.
It is probably a unique representation of England in literature, a very unconventional one, definitely worth reading if someone is interested in the history of England, or seeing how the working class lived at the times of Lessing.

[Bryan Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lessing's autobiographical work reads like a novel, one in which she refrains from making herself the main character. All the characters, including herself, are fully developed and easy to identify with, however far from perfect they may be (or perhaps precisely for that reason). The dialogue supports the maxim that "the past is a different country" - they don't speak like my generation (but neither do the youngsters portrayed on British TV these days, so I guess the maxim can be applied to the future, too).

[Lili O Varela · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.75 como siempre un Nobel no es casualidad ni porque sí y siempre es garantía.

Esta mujer está muy por arriba de lo que esperaba, cada parte es tan real que hasta me desespera para bien y para mal, simplemente decía las cosas como tienen que ser.

[Steve Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it a very acutely observed book. I love the way Lessing describes the characters and allows them to form in our minds as they speak.

[Mbuye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1960, ‘In Pursuit of the English’ is an autobiographical memoir about the first year Doris Lessing spent in London’s East End on her return from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) with one of her children, Peter. Lessing was an intensely private writer, and gives away nothing about herself or her son, except to say that her idea of England conceptualised from the expat English community in Africa was very different from what she experienced in the cheap lodgings she found in the Whitechapel district.

At the same time, there is tremendous relish in Lessing's descriptions of her landlady and her family, as well as in that of the other tenants. Lessing initially shares a room with another girl, a saleswoman with streetsmarts, who gives valuable advice about surviving in London on a small budget. Although Lessing is soon given an independent set of rooms, both women maintain their friendship.

Her landlady, generous and fractious by turns, and the others in the same boarding house there are given rich and unusual accounts. One of them, an independent minded sex worker, who reads serious literature in her spare time, takes Lessing around London in the few descriptions of the city, and comments on the changing styles in architecture over the centuries. A lawsuit brought by her landlord against one of the tenants brings us one of the most farcical court room trials that you could hope to find.

This is a shrewdly observant and kindly novel about an England and a people utterly different from the glamorous visions of a land and the English that Lessing had imagined, but despite their loud vulgarity, Lessing finds a warmth a generosity, a lust and passion for life among them that appeals both to her imagination and her lively sense of humour .

Lessing received the Novel Prize for Literature in 2006 for the body of her work, but this is one of the most diverting of all her books.

[jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

"Made in England", conocido en inglés como "In Pursuit of the English", es una obra fascinante de la aclamada autora Doris Lessing. Publicada en 1960, esta novela semiautobiográfica ofrece una mirada perspicaz y a menudo crítica de la vida en la posguerra en Londres, explorando las complejidades sociales y culturales de Inglaterra desde la perspectiva de una recién llegada.

Lessing logra capturar las dificultades y peculiaridades de adaptarse a una nueva cultura mientras enfrenta las realidades de la clase trabajadora londinense. La protagonista se muda a un edificio de apartamentos lleno de personajes diversos, cada uno representando diferentes aspectos de la sociedad inglesa.

Además de su aguda observación social, la novela está llena de humor sutil. Lessing añade momentos irónicos y situaciones que, a pesar de las dificultades, resultan cómicas. Esta combinación de seriedad y ligereza hace que la lectura sea reveladora y entretenida, reflejando las contradicciones y excentricidades del entorno británico de una manera a veces divertida.

La novela no solo es un retrato sociocultural, sino también una reflexión sobre la identidad y el sentido de pertenencia. La protagonista lucha con su sentido de desplazamiento y busca encontrar su lugar en un mundo que le resulta tanto fascinante como ajeno. Este tema resuena especialmente con los lectores que han experimentado la inmigración o el desarraigo.

[Elsje · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "In Pursuit of the English" beschrijft Doris Lessing hoe ze met haar jonge zoontje eind jaren '40 van de vorige eeuw vanuit (toen nog) Rhodesië naar Londen komt, om daar kennis te maken met de échte Engelsen.

Ze komt in het huis van Flo en Dan terecht. Een tweetal dat met hun dochtertje in de kelder woont en de rest van het huis verhuurt. Schrijnende maar vooral hilarische taferelen van alle huisgenoten. Van het vervuilde hoogbejaarde stel, de jonge vrouw die kwijnt omdat haar geliefde de boot afhoudt, de vrouw die mannen meeneemt om zo financieel op de been te kunnen blijven, het stel dat elke dag enorme ruzies heeft. En dan Doris zelf, die met haar typemachine een leven als schrijfster ambieert. Wat door Flo gezien wordt als verraad van de werkende klasse.

Geweldige openingszin trouwens: “I came into contact with the English very early in life, because as it turns out, my father was an Englishman.”

Ja, erg mooi!

Doris Lessing (1919 - 2013) kreeg in 2007 de Nobelprijs voor de literatuur.

[Judith Iglehart]

Exceptional characterizations and anti war currents. Misogyny, money,and mischief in nove

Could be described as In Pursuit of Lives as personalities are captured and dissected. Misogyny, money,and mischief portrayed in novel situations. Just enough verisimilitude to lend a portrait of the author.

[Jorge Esquivel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Esperaba más de una escritora de su fama. Entretenida pero seguramente no de sus mejores novelas. Crítica social a una época con condiciones ciertamente sombrías.

[Laura Ruiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

No fue lo que esperaba, tarde mucho en leerlo.

[pablito · Rating 4 out of 5]

no recuerdo el final pero el camino fue hermoso

[Claire P · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book completely eluded me. I know it's a Nobel prize winner, and I understood mentally why it was an excellent book, but it touched nothing within me emotionally.

I felt Lessing was as remote as she could possibly be, even though she was living in the middle of a rather hilarious boarding house with her son as she attempted to write.

Everything seemed to be described at arm's length, and while I knew how I was supposed to feel about the inhabitants, I never found those actual feelings generated.

I actually thought this was a quite supercilious look at the so-called lower classes, but since no one else feels that way, perhaps that statement says more about me than Lessing.

I did love the prostitute who didn't like to talk about sex - that was dirty talk, and she didn't want any part of it! Other than that, as I say, this book eluded me. Perhaps I'll try it again later, when I'm older and wiser.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little book.

I would have liked it better if the protagonist hadn't been so detached. It was also hard to see some of the risks she took while being the sole caretaker of a young boy.

The strangest part of this book was some of the errors. There were some typos such as the word "sighed" instead of "signed" and missing quotation marks, but the strangest was the wrong last name of a character on the summary on the back cover. Thus it had the feel of something not quite finished.

[Scot Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doris Lessing is one of those authors I'f always heard about but never actually read. The book (autobiographical) is not one of her more well known titles, but it offers a wonderful sketch of postwar London full of quirky working class characters and gritty kitchen-sink observations. It's also quite funny. I loved the passing reference to an old man who'd been taught to read books by atheists through the local council, and runs rants to anyone who will listen that there is no God. Priceless.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Popular Library paperback is labelled Fiction. Elsewhere this item is passed off as Memoir. Creative nonfiction, I suppose. A story of people (a mere handful of the titular English) and of a city (at least a microcosm of London). Everything (spoiler alert?), in London, is "just around the corner" though the "corner" in question may be quite distant from the next intersection.

[Gowri N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is less of a documentary and more of a sketch. It offers some interesting perspectives of life in a small wannabe-big boarding house for mostly impoverished guests. Quirky characters and the mildly amused narrative tone make for a great read.

[Bárbara Solares · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me pareció una manera bastante desordenada de escribir, muchos diálogos y poco relato. La supuesta autobiografía era poco perceptibles, más se hablaba de los otros. La narradora era más que todo una espectadora.

[Adrienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

i reread this in honor of ms. lessing's prize. it's pretty awesome.

[Fenixbird SandS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nobel-prize winning author Doris Lessing -English lifestyle