The Grass is Singing
Set in South Africa under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is both a riveting chronicle of human disintegration and a beautifully understated social critique. Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm work their slow poison, and Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of an enigmatic and virile black servant, Moses. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses -- master and slave -- are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion. Their psychic tension explodes in an electrifying scene that ends this disturbing tale of racial strife in colonial South Africa. The Grass Is Singingblends Lessing's imaginative vision with her own vividly remembered early childhood to recreate the quiet horror of a woman's struggle against a ruthless fate.
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2recommend
2mentions
2people
2023–2026years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- It’s hard to know what anyone considers the “usual greats”. Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature, but she doesn’t seem to make it into the “average” person’s greats list, possibly because her use of language is very much not grade 5. Try The Golden Notebook, The Summer Before the Dark, The Grass Is Singing, The Good Terrorist, The Fifth Child, or the series that starts with Shikasta.
E.L. Doctorow is another such example. Try The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, Loon Lake.
In the scifi genre (aside from the Shikasta series already mentioned), M. John Harrison is worth a look. He’s got a long bibliography but Light might be a good starting point.
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum.
Some of Ursula Le Guin’s more serious books might fit the bill, like The Dispossessed or The Left Hand of Darkness.
Someone already mentioned Mervyn Peake, he definitely fits this category.
Wow, finally some fiction that isn't science fiction and something written by a woman. Excellent choice! I highly recommend her other works."The Golden Notebook" (novel by Doris Lessing)What blew me away the most about Golden Notebook: It was published in 1962 -- 60 years ago! The ideas about feminism that the two lead women characters discuss are way ahead of their time.
Also by Ms. Lessing, I recommend "The Grass Is Singing". She really knows how transport you inside the minds of her characters. The lead character's struggle to adapt to difficult farm life in a colony is real.
