Whether describing an actress in love with an angry married man, the simple pleasures of a public park or the London Blitz, this collection of fine, moving pieces always rings true. Both heartbreaking and in places, disturbing, nonetheless, still rewarding reading. Lessing is more famous for the Golden Notebook, but these showcase her broad range and near flawless gift for making characters come to life. The story with the homeless old woman for example will stay with you forever.

Doris Lessing's excellent short-story "To Room Nineteen" is doubtless an extraordinary piece of literature. It is a story about a failure in intelligence, about depression, suffering, disintegration, alienatation and finally - about suicide. There are many approaches to this text: For example, one can read it as a psychological case study especially by using Freud's ideas about the "id" and the "super-ego". The super-ego is obviously the ethically aware element, restricted by morality principles, whereas the id, which stands in direct contradiction, represents the source of all our psychic energies. It is the source of our aggressions and desires. The protagonist, Susan Rawlings, is kind of torn between these psychic zones: her entire life is marked by doing things intelligent and sensible, but later on, when she is in her early forties, she gets to understand that she is ruined by the very achievement of her goals - goals that are determined by society. Therefore, the message of the text is that it is irreperably wrong to do everything right by society standards and means. Susan has everything she wanted: a good-looking husband, lovely children and a house in the suburbs, but some day, when her husbands confesses an affair, her orderly planned world collapsed. Slowly but surely she comprehens that her rational world was only a fake and not much more than a big misconception. Henceforth she tries to develop different strategies to cope with that new insight. All she needs is a space, or a state of affairs where it would not be necessary to keep reminding herself on all the boring bits that life demanded from her. Since she can't find solitude in her own house she looks for a hotel room, in which she sits, thinks and stares into empty space. Here she finds complete isolation that helps her regenerating. Unfortunately, one day the room loses its revitalising effect, because her husband suspected that she is having an affair and engages a detective to keep a watch on her. Susan goes a last time to the hotel, turns the gas on and drifts off into the dark river.

Doris Lessing has led such an interesting life, and writing a diary all the time. She writes of a time completely foreign to me, living a history of the changes in Southern Afica. I find her autobiography a great read, and prefer it to her novels. Interesting and moving, and explains much about her!

Humor, history, beauty, mental teasers: here are challenges to habitual and defensive thought. We must turn the stone over and examine its several sides. Shah can be compared to Socrates in his benevolent probing into our cherished but unexamined patterns of thought and action.
Here Shah has translated and assembled a most considerate introduction to Sufi literature and practice. The way of the Sufi includes chapters on Sufism in the West, classical authors, Sufi masters, teaching stories and other topics. But this book is not just about the Sufi way, it forms a part of the Sufi Way in our time. Read with energy and an open (but not glib) mind, it can be an avenue for experiential learning.
Enlightening, entertaining, engrossing, The Way of the Sufi just might affect the way you look at things and what you do.

Exerpts:
The Seed of Sufi Knowledge
The true seed was made in Adam's time. The miracle of life, existence.
It germinated in the period of Noah. The miracle of growth, rescue.
By the time of Abraham it had sent forth brsanches. The miracle of fruit.
The time of Jesus was that of the ripening of the yield. The lmiracle of tasting, joy.
Mohammed's time saw the pressing of clear wine. The miracle of attainment, transformation. Bayazid Bistami

What Looks After You
Knowledge is better than wealth. You have to look after wealth; knowledge looks after you. Ali

The Thief and the Blanket
A thief entered the house of a Sufi, and found nothing there. As he was leaving, the dervish perceived his disapppointment and threw him the blanket in which he was sleeping, so that he should not go away impty-handed.

The idea that higher learning is not something that automatically takes place in the presence of a teaching influence, but that how to learn may itself have to be learned before real learning can take place, may be new to many people. But on careful consideration it makes a lot of sense. For the fields of psychology, sociology and education provide us with ample evidence that such things as wrong assumptions, incorrect approaches and idées fixes can pose formidable barriers to knowledge. In this remarkable and fascinating book, Sufi author Idries Shah shows how these and other seemingly innocuous factors can be every bit as hindering as high walls and locked doors - indeed even more so, since they are far less obvious to those whom they impede. I found LEARNING HOW TO LEARN to be a breath of fresh air and - as with Shah's other books - strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the development of higher forms of understanding.

We in the West tend to have a sort of "Minifest Destiny" attitude toward spirituality. "All that's required is to spend the time, make the effort, and all my goals will be achieved". In Learning How to Learn Idries Shah shows how unproductive such an attitude can be. On the Sufi path, as well as many aspects of ordinary life, certain prerequisites are required before learning can take place. The book, also subtitled Beginning to Begin, provides essential information that allows the reader to arrive at a place where higher learning can begin. An essential book and key to the Shah corpus.

The characters in this book are fascinating, but the prose is a terrible chore to read. The father, for example, talks constantly in baby talk to his kids. Here's a quote:

"Now we'll have to work up a schedule. And fustest, you must write to your pore little Sam ebbly week and tell how 'tis tuh hum; and second, you must keep a record of the birds and hanni-miles wot visit Tohoga House..."

Maybe you can read that for hundreds of pages, but I can't. I ended up just skipping the passages where the father speaks to his children.

Stead's most common strategy for character development is for her characters to give long lectures out loud (either to themselves or to an audience), and these lectures are tedious and repetitive.

And finally, if you do get the book, don't read the introduction by Doris Lessing until you're done with the novel. Apparently the publisher decided it was all right to provide an introduction that gives away key events in the story.

The introduction, which is by Randall Jarell (not Doris Lessing) was originally intended as an Afterword, and is so published in previous editions of the book.

That's why it gives away the plot.

I have no idea why the idiot publisher put it first this time.

Anyway, while it takes some patience to get through Sam's babytalk and Henny's rages, there is gold all the way through. The inner life of a house and family is conveyed as in few other books, with vividness and specificity.

Just don't expect to like any of the characters, and you will be rewarded with high drama and deep insight.

The story of a very bad marriage between Sam, who is completely out of touch with reality, and Henny, consumed by bitterness. The story is told from each of their points of view, as well as some of their many children (in particular a child from Sam's first marriage who's just entering adolescence), and, as a rare treat, the occasional outsider. The family struggles with growing poverty, but much more damaging to everyone involved is the stubbornness of the parents and their hatred for each other...I didn't think this book was too long. I found it gripping and absorbing the whole way through--suspenseful, in fact. Ms. Stead manages to do what too few writers can: write characters who are deeply flawed and even unlikeable but who still compel us to take a great interest in them and what happens to them. This book kind of reminds me of some of Faulkner's better novels, but less condescending towards its characters and more insightful...

The magnificently resonant language in this short book made it a delight to read. However, I could not help but reflect that at the end, it's depressing. All man's works and labours turn to dust, all is "vanity and vexation of the soul". Therefore what is the meaning of life, what reason is there to strive, to carry on?

In the absence of any obvious and objective meaning, in the face of the transience of all things and the absence of justice, the answer (as in The Book of Job) appears to be once again to trust in God. Whether or not you're convinced by this depends on whether or not you have faith: it seems to me a central pivot upon which belief (and non-belief) depends.

The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. My eldest sister, Dawn, sent me this book. This was the simplest of gestures with the largest of statements. On the inside cover "Master the difference between invigorating pride and wicked arrogance....Lead by example and not by arrogance. I was not the only one to have read the words of "The Preacher". Doris Lessing very well encapsulates the depth of the beauty of early 17th century writing. This signatured style provides the King James version of The Bible with the longevity it has endured thus far.

In Doris Lessing's second "Children of Violence" series *A Proper Marriage*, we discover that Martha, in marrying Douglas, becomes even more torn in her quest to attain full stature as a woman. Martha, in this story, not only has to reconcile her self to the causes she believes in, to her marriage with Douglas Knowell, and to motherhood, but also to the townspeople with whom she becomes entwined. Another delight of this novel for me is the way Lessing has Martha look at both individual and group dynamics throughout the story, providing seductively keen insight. Lessing's writing promises tension, suspense, and wonder for the engaged reader. *A Proper Marriage* sequels *Martha Quest* in which many of the delights in the first of the series continue on to the second, including the beautiful way Lessing mirrors Martha's interior life with the exotic and varied African natural and elemental landscape. I would recommed reading *Martha Quest* first in order to more fully appreciate *A Proper Marriage.*

This novel, the second in the Children of Violence series, will be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone who first met Martha Quest in Doris Lessing's first novel of the series of the same name. This is a story about a young woman about to create her own life with her own family and home, but Martha's self-absorbed indecisiveness make for a character who refuses to do what is expected from her by family and community. Yet Martha is always viewed with compassion and loved by her reader even in her darkest moments.

A central theme of the novel, set during World War II, is Martha's determination not become her mother, or any of the domineering society mother figures of colonial South Africa, but as her own baby is born she sees that circle beginning to repeat itself and rebels with all her strength against the fear of a future filled with domesticity and garden parties. Martha's subsequent actions become the proverbial ripples in a pond as she fails to learn that now that she is adult her actions have long lasting consequences. Yet this is not a typical coming of age story.

By the end of the novel, Martha's stakes out her own path after having become involved with a fledging communist party and its colorful comrades who begin to play an increasingly important role in her life to fill the gap she has created by her rejection of the society in which she was raised and the family she has created.

Any fan of Doris Lessing or any student of history will thoroughly enjoy this novel. One of the richest features of this novel is Lessing's brilliance in the development of her characters whose personalities and idiosyncrasies will echo long after the reader has finished the novel. That said, I thoroughly recommend that the reader read Martha Quest before delving into this novel or other in the series. Only by reading the series in order can one truly understand the evolution of Martha's character and life path.

Shikasta is the first, the largest (in bulk and in scope) and the most epic of the quintet collectively titled Canopus in Argos: Archives. It's a stunning work, one of the very few science-fiction novels to show any awareness of the cosmic perspective of Olaf Stapledon (Last and First Men, Star Maker), let alone adapt it into another, wholly independent vision. Shikasta is the name Canopus use for Earth; the word means broken, wounded, suffering. The book falls into two parts. The first is a science-fiction revision of the Old Testament, an astounding overview of the Canopean Empire's colonising efforts over vast forgotten tracts of time which have come down to us as fossilised, distorted myths. It makes for a breathtaking two hundred pages, rivalled for sheer dizzying cosmicism only by Stapledon, the best of Lovecraft and some of Stanislaw Lem. The second part of the book is the story of the Sherban family during the last days of Western civilisation; and particularly the story of George Sherban, an agent of Canopus who (as many times before) has taken on human shape in order to guide the evolution of the human race. Sherban's efforts, observed through the bewildered but movingly sympathetic eyes of his sister Rachel, and later by a thoughtful and humane Chinese colonial administrator, culminate in a vast show trial of the white races (the natives of what the Canopeans, with a fine sense of perspective, call "the Northwest fringes") for thousands of years of horrific oppression. Despite the glorious writing, admirable originality and a total refusal to settle for easy answers, I'm not altogether sure this second part quite comes off - after the merciless dissection of human frailties in Part One, it just doesn't seem credible for Sherban's scheme to work. And the ending comes perilously close to suggesting that if we could only kill off nine-tenths of the population and live in geometrically perfect cities, all our problems would be over. That said, however, Shikasta remains a great and compelling work, always fascinating and often deeply moving - an amazing synthesis of the cosmic perspective with the political and the personal. Small wonder that it took Lessing four more books to work out the implications as fully as she wished.

I don't read a whole lot of novels, and truth be told I've never been able to read anything else of Lessing's. Yet this book remains indelible and forever in my heart. Lessing herself said that this work felt born through her as much as from her, and considering the discrimination and intellect of the woman, I take that as a powerful statement.

And truly visionary this work is- it's able to zoom into the heart and process of darkness in our contemporary world without comprimise, then give the reader a view from above without sentiment or easy platitudes, with compassion and true insight.

This is a true work of spirituality- that is bringing the heart and the intellect together, without resorting to easy answers. May each one of us aspire to the dedication and tireless compassion as does Johor in order to benefit beings.

Shikasta is one of those rare creations that defies classification, a gripping novel which through the medium of fantasy reveals deep truth. For its rich humanity, its scope and its uncanny perceptions of the human condition, this work is sure to last forever.

I don't know why Doris Lessing is classified as a feminist. Apparently, she didn't understand that herself. I view her as one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century and the best from the 2nd half. At the end of this book I attained a deep sense of liberation.

This book is the last (and the best) in The Children of Violence series. Doris Lessing is my favourite author and this book is a difficult (and big) one, but it is one of her best works. It changed my opinion about mental health, politics and science fiction. If you like Lessing you will love it.

For me, incredibly deep view of life in England approx 1945-mid 60's and the future. One of the books I would take to a desert island - I have read and reread it. I so appreciate her insights on politics, both left and right, families, relationships, schizophrenia and the mental health professions, growing up, peace movement, writers, and more. I've read it over 6 times, I would guess, and I keep finding fascinating insights. It is the 5th of a series, but stands on its own, tho reading the others is worthwhile and does add to your understanding of the main character. I recommend reading them spaced out, not one after the other, as she is a bit longwinded.

Reading Lessing is like picking up the phone and hearing the voice of an old friend. Leave it to her, no foreigner to the left- to be the first to reveal the pathology inherent in those who make a political cause out of their own alienation. This is a brave statement and today, not so startling a tale- given the Symbionese trial and Ira Einhorn's conviction- Lessing drew it for us before it unraveled and as always, drew it with a care for the details of personality in social estrangement.

Lessing's story of unfinished growth and the contaminations of naivete and thrill have laid the passage to what now, we in the West have come to fear as no longer distant- terror, youth gone out of control and powerlessness.

Lessing shows us the inside of a group of wanna-be radicals. In a very plain and everyday way, the main character (Alice) shows us how acts of brutality and inhumanity often come from idiocy. This book really makes you think about the dangers of any course of thought taken on for the wrong reasons.

I purchased this book with it was new to the market for reasons I cannot recall. Maybe I felt it would be "worldly" to read something by a British author. I must have started it a half dozen times but finally went all the way through when a friend, another "reformed leftist," recommended it along with Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier" and others.

It's slow. If you're into adventure novels, you'll never finish it. But something--something indescribable--compelled me to keep reading.

(...)

I guess it's the painful detail of particularly Alice's self-reflection that makes the book slow and difficult and long to read. A portion of the text that rang a bell for me, however, was Alice's confrontation of her mother near the end of the book. Alice's drunk mother is sulking about all the sacrifices she's made for Alice--who's been living for years by stealing as much as she could from her parents and others while whining about their "middle class" values. What is obvious is that Alice is completely transparent to her mother, despite her inebriation! Here mom is swimming in her bottle of Scotch BECAUSE of all she's done for Alice who claims to reject her values. "Why don't you get a job? DO something for the first time in your life?" her mother pleads, then accuses Alice of being the caretaker/housewife, a role she she claims to deplore.

I don't want to give away the event that ends the book. Other critics are disappointed in the book's end, but I'm not. It's sort of a combination of the ending of Hitchcock's "Psycho" with that of John Sayles' "Limbo." There ARE items that the author could have spiced up the ending with, but they're not the point. The point is Alice, her pointlessness, her confusion as to her relationships with housemates and family, and with a society she ostensibly rejects.

It's a fascinating story but, again, don't expect shoot-'em-up action.