Alfred and Emily

In the first part of the book Doris Lessing imagines her parents lives as if they had lived easier and happier lives, lives in which they did not marry each other. Lessing is a first- rate storyteller and thus this part of the work is readable. But it is not really deep in feeling and not compelling on an emotional level. In the second part she tells the story of her father who lost a leg in the First War, and also lost most of his good friends there. A tough and determined character haunted by nightmares of the war he went on to make a new life for himself and his family- though the injuries of the war soon got to him and he died quite young at sixty after suffering greatly. Her mother who nursed the father during the war and enjoyed the time of their social whirl in Tehran also had an extremely difficult life. Lessing speaks of her terrible conflict with her mother and her having married to get away from her. She describes the world of her Rhodesian early years and the period of her early adulthood right after the war. She has a great ability to create an atmosphere of Time and Place. In speaking of her parents difficult emotional lives she makes the comment that 'children learn the emotions of their parents'. Certainly she gives a sense of having some of the same kind of toughness, and determination that her parents had. She also speaks of her mother's remarkable storytelling ability and how this was transmitted to her. This comes as a kind of grudging thank- you note to a mother who she repeatedly accuses of having interfered too much her life. Lessing also tells the story of her brother who narrowly survived the sinking of his ship in the Second World War, and who lived for many years with what she calls a kind of 'dullness' of mind. In an incident which sounds like it comes from one of the books of Oliver Sachs her brother received a knock on the head in his latter years, and it suddenly brought back the clarity of consciousness he had had before the ship incident. He died not long after claiming that most of his adult life he had lived being absent from himself. Here too Lessing describes the life of one she is very close to in a very effective way, but somehow without great warmth or loving feeling. For Lessing Life seems to be hard even if one is able to make a remarkable story of it.

"Alfred and Emily: A Novella". Alfred Taylor is a farmer who becomes affluent and marries a warm caring local. Ignoring the rage of her father, Emily McVeagh leaves town and goes to London where she becomes a nurse who marries a doctor. World War I never occurs so they never meet as a wounded soldier and a nurse. "Alfred and Emily; Two Lives. Alfred Taylor was severely injured in combat on the continent. He was medically evacuated back to a London hospital. There he met Nurse Emily McVeigh. As he healed, they fell in love and got married. They move to Rhodesia after the war and have two children Doris and Harry, but their colonial farm fails. This is a fascinating combo historical biographical fiction and a short biography. The novella is a terrific alternate history of the author's parents while the biography provides a short guide to compare what if to what happened. Fans of the great author will appreciate this fine book although the fiction overwhelms the nonfiction as the latter is too minute for newbies and too repetitive for fans while the former provides an intriguing look at probably what would not have happened if the liberating of the masses did not happen because the mechanism WWI was never fought. Harriet Klausner

I had not read before any of Lessing's books but I wanted to get to know this Nobel Prize winner writer... First book I found was Alfred & Emily... The first part, I was reading it and asking myself how this "Barbara Cartland"ish style could have won such an esteemed prize... It was so "soapy", "pink", "superficial" in every sense... However, I hung on, I made it to the second part... And there, I made acquaintance with the genious writer in Doris Lessing's person... The abrupt change of style was remarkable... The sentence structure which was so subtle in the soapy part, became shattered when telling the tale of shattered lives... The style which was so easy going in the pink part, became devious in describing the "no way out" life of her parents... Such sofistication of mastery of language is so unique.... Even if only for experiencing this sofistication, you should take "Alfred & Emily" into consideration...

I was not too pleased with the first fictional part of this book but when I read the second part I understood why Doris wrote the first part. What a hard life they all had in Zimbabwe once known as southern Rhodesia! But such a wonderful life: the story of the black bull calf touched my heart. and the food! and wasn't her father handsome? The boring life she invented for her parents living separate lives might not have been one they would have liked it at all. That is the puzzle of life. Love makes hardship worthwhile. But of course, war screws everyone but George Bush and his friends. Krupp was the Bush family of World War one. Does it matter? No. Doris' parents seemed to her to have been crushed by an early eqivalent of the Bush family. She couldn't wait to escape. And now she revisits her childhood and pities her parents even though she was aloof to her mother for ages.

At the age of 88, Ms. Lessing has created a hybrid biography of her parents. The first section is an alternate history of their lives where they do not marry and go on to happier, fulfilling lives. The second part is the reality of their unhappy marriage (and Ms. Lessing's unhappy childhod) and the negative impact that World War I had upon their lives with the many deaths they were exposed to. One has the sense that this book is a summing up and looking back on her life to where it all began.