book data
124 ratings, 3.60 average rating, 16 reviews
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published
June 17th 2002
by Flamingo
binding
Paperback, 240 pages
isbn
0586088997
(isbn13: 9780586088999)
description
As the summer begins, Kate Brown -- attractive, intelligent, forty five, happily enough married, with a house in the London suburbs and three grown ch...more
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| topics | replies | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-life Crises/Inner Turmoil | 1 | 8 | 08/19/2008 08:40AM | |
| what? and why? | 1 | 1 | 12/30/2007 03:41AM |
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 189)
Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
someone who often dreams of seals (?)
After drudging through page after page of Mrs. Michael Brown's good hair and bad hair, I ask myself the very same words so often uttered by the beautiful, pot-smoking, dancing waif Maureen: "'what's the point?'"
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to (Teresa) Fenixbird by:
NY Times Book Reviewrecommends it for: All Great "self talk" Vivid settings
This is wonderful...She (Kate Brown) is 1/4 Portugese married to a lovely Englishman for many years & now at age 45 finds herself suddenly called into active duty as a bona fide Portugese translator...and into a new lifestyle....At Chapter 2 she is embarking on travel to Istanbul, Turkey....I am already amazed at the clever opportunities that this author uses!
On the cover of my 1968 printed paperback I found and bought from Bookmans, also The Golden Notebook is also being promote...more
On the cover of my 1968 printed paperback I found and bought from Bookmans, also The Golden Notebook is also being promote...more
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Read in January, 2008
This book is perhaps too character-driven. (Stop dreaming and go get your hair done, you pathetic old bat!) And yet, I was struck by how much I could relate to Kate Brown--the capable wife/mother who reluctantly embarks on the standard issue midlife crisis, and returns to her London suburb only after an exhausting series of salty pan-Euro adventures. Doris Lessing showers her reader with all imaginable foils of Kate Brown--all, that is, except the one I wanted most to meet: the Kate who had ...more
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This is my first foray into Doris Lessing, 2007 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (and it confirmed my suspicion that Margaret Atwood is the one who should have won the award). Well, one is supposed to rate a book according to one's own idiosyncratic taste, especially on a semi-private forum like this. Hence, three stars. I do, however, admire the genius of this book, as well as Lessing's strong feminist message ("feminist" does seem something of an oversimplification for the...more
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Read in March, 2008
After an aborted attempt at the Golden Notebook in my 20s I've kept away from Doris Lessing. When she was awarded the nobel prize I thought I should try her again, and this was all the local bookshop had from her 'oeuvre'. There are some devastatingly accurate chapters on becoming a middle-aged woman, but it lacked structure and meandered (boringly) in the second half.
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This book was amazing. It is about a middle aged woman and her struggle with her identity, passion and family. Well written and powerful.
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Read in December, 2008
I have mixed feelings about Doris Lessing. When she's on target, she is fantastic. "Memoirs of a Survivor" remains a favorite. This one, though, I dunno. It was engaging enough, a carefully drawn portrait of a middle-aged woman coming to terms with herself & her role as wife and mother. The writing is wonderfully terse, creating striking imagery without wasting words. But the book felt a bit quaint, primarily because, since its publication in the early 70s, we've come a long way, b...more
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Read in January, 2008
After reading to Simone de Beauvoir, and Marguerite Duras I decided to read this honest and creative book of Doris Lessing.
The author is conscious about the hypocricy about the rol of women in a society controlled by men. Doris Lessing uses a sociological methodology for understanding the frustation of many women, and her dreams never told.
Kate Brown lives in a "perfect family" where everything looks normal, and straight. She believed in the happiness found in such rol. How...more
The author is conscious about the hypocricy about the rol of women in a society controlled by men. Doris Lessing uses a sociological methodology for understanding the frustation of many women, and her dreams never told.
Kate Brown lives in a "perfect family" where everything looks normal, and straight. She believed in the happiness found in such rol. How...more
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Read in May, 2008
My book club hated this one, but I did not. She took me into the mind of a 45 year old British woman in the early 1970's who was dealing with her children all being away from home and a husband who travels a lot and screws around on her anyways. I will never be in this situation, but the fact that she made me see how it could be is why I found this so effective. Some complained that there was no joy or sense of humor in this book, but she is going through a CRISIS. Those usually aren't ...more
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Read in November, 2008
I think I would like this novel better if I were older—I don't yet have the... experience? distance? to really evaluate the evolution of Lessing's protagonist and decide if it rings true for me or not. I certainly thought the beginning of it was marvellously done, and Lessing impressed me as a marvellous writer when it comes to the internals—the sketching out of thoughts, of identity—but I became less and less certain of the novel as I reached the second half of it....more
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The summer before the dark by Doris May Lessing (1973), [1st. American ed.]
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Read in October, 2008
I'm still working my way through it...it's really interesting, about a woman who's children leave home and she has to re-establish her identity. I think it feels a little old-fashioned since most women now work throughout their years of motherhood. But I'll finish it, goddammit!
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Women's issues. It revolves around women and relationships between mothers and daughters, with the main character substituting another young woman as a daughter figure. It also explored an aging woman's role in society.
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Read in November, 2008
Another amazingly intuitive, impeccably written, incisively described experience from one of my favorite authors...
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