Status Updates From The Memoirs of a Survivor

It is not the pain in a woman’s crying that is the point; no, it is finality of the acceptance of a wrong. So it was, is now, and must ever be, say those closed oozing eyes, the rocking body, the grief. Grief—yes, an act of mourning; that’s it. Some enemy has been faced, has been tackled, but a battle has been lost, all the chips are down, everything is spent, nothing is left, nothing can be expected…

This is part Parable of the Sower and part House of Leaves, but the experience of reading it is nothing like either one. The prose is sharp, crystalline. I have no idea what Lessing is trying to do. I’m pretty sure the two main characters are actually the same person.

Everybody played a part in this conspiracy that nothing much was happening—or that it was happening, but one day things would go into reverse and hey, presto! back we would be in the good old days. Which, though? That was a matter of temperament: if you have nothing, you are free to choose among dreams and fantasies.

Doris Lessing is just so. Fucking. Good. This book is deeply bizarre and at the same time feels like the truest thing I’ve read in ages.