463. The Grass is Singing

The Grass Is Singing
Doris Lessing
1950
Around 210 pages

So far I am not overly impressed with 1950, but this is definitely the best of the bunch. This was reminiscent of Native Son (which I loved), and it was great to go back to Africa, even if it always seems to be through a British woman's perspective.

Right from the start, we learn through a newspaper article that Mary Turner, a white woman living in Rhodesia, was murdered by her black servant Moses. We then go back through Mary's tragic life, which involved a desperate marriage to Dick, a poor farmer. Mary's poverty and anger leads her to shun her white neighbors out of embarrassment and treat black people as subhuman. 

Nobody is heroic in this novel, but it's hard to assign blame to anybody. Their lives are completely miserable, and how can you not hate the world when every moment of your existence is a struggle? Every part of it seems so inevitable. Which is great storytelling, and manages to highlight the main tragedy of human existence.

I don't find Lessing to be the most engaging author, but I enjoyed the story and she's a very visual writer.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

The title is a phrase from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land quoted after the novel's dedication to a Mrs Gladys Maasdorp.

A Swedish adaptation was released in 1981.

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