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Jan 01, 2009

Manny rated it:

I was thinking the other day about C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle, a book which I utterly loathe. As I said in my review, you can pardon the uninspired writing or the preachiness. What gets me angry is the subplot with Puzzle the donkey, who fronts the religious coup and, somehow, is whitewashed and receives eternal salvation. Apparently, because his unspeakably evil acts were performed in good faith, everything is fine. The surprising thing is that Lewis lived though WW II, and was writing not t More...

11 comments like (13 people liked it)

Jun 20, 2010

Jennifer (aka EM) rated it:

It's been about 2 weeks now since I've finished The Good Terrorist, and so I'm in that place where I feel most compelled but least capable of writing a review. Since that's never stopped me before, here goes.

I must applaud Lessing for her skill at creating characters, Alice in particular, who are utterly annoying, petulant, stupid, dangerously immature, and appallingly destructive. These characters wrap their fundamental laziness and selfishness in a cloak of ignorant, misguided, so More...

8 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2009

Naomi rated it:

I persevered with this because (a) Lessing won the Nobel, and (b) GoodReads makes me feel like a failure if I don't finish. I couldn't sympathise with any of the thoroughly dislikable but admittedly well-drawn characters. Its protagonist is the much put-upon Alice, a Marxist revolutionary with no clear motivation for being one, who waits on all the freeloaders in her London squat - oops, commune - her servility eventually leading her into terrorism. The first half of the book plods through her s More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 21, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 22, 2011

Kenyon rated it:

This is a book about terrorism written before the Age of Terrorism. That is, before September 11th, before the "War on Terror," hell, even before the fall of the Soviet Union. Any account of terrorism in its modern form must necessarily be incomplete if written before the rise of this "semi-state sponsored," international and large-scale form of Terror.

That being said, the book recounts, very personally, a brand of terrorism that from the current historical lens see More...

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Feb 08, 2012

Kerri rated it:

The story follows Alice, a 36-year-old revolutionary in 1980s London. She and fellow members of a loosely-organized, far-left organization squat in a large, dilapidated house. Alice serves as the under-appreciated care-taker of the group by cooking, cleaning, fixing up the house, and dealing with the utility boards. With few exceptions, the rest of the characters come across as hateful, stupid, selfish, and immature. They are essentially two-dimensional negative stereotypes of young radicals. T More...

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Nov 17, 2010

Sammie rated it:

This book is centred on character development and group dynamics. Consequently, the plot suffers somewhat - not a great deal actually happens. It builds up to a satisfying ending, but the journey towards it is slow and detailed. None of the characters are particularly likable. This group of 'revolutionaries' are living in a squat; planning their picketting, grafitti and attempts to get involved with established and active political groups. The book is told from the point of view of Alice, the 'G More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 04, 2007

Lynda rated it:

I first read this as a teenager and just started it again... the story of a british radical who is painfully co-dependent with and mothering towards her compatriots. The details of her machinations inside local bureaucracies (both governmental and social) are astounding.
I wish the picture of the hardback cover was available. It's the title spray-painted in perfect cursive onto a brick wall...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 07, 2008

Cwinters02 added it

I hated this damn book. I was forced to read it for class, and now I have to write a fucking 10-page paper on it by Wednesday. Every page was torturous to read. Nothing happened until the very end, and even that sucked. I recommend that you never read this book. There was not one character or plot line worth investing a second of your life on. Thanks for listening.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 24, 2011

Fiona rated it:

Although written in 1985 this book is relevant and compelling in today’s society. The 'Good Terrorist' is a combination of great story telling and a simple provoking plot. It tells the story of a group of left wing political extremists in the 1980’s and
their journey from revolutionary dilettantes to actual terrorists.
Terrorist is a word often cited in the media where we are presented with the idea of an almost inhumane person so dedicated to a particular cause (be it Northern Ireland More...

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Sep 15, 2011

Artnoose rated it:

I was given this book by a friend who pretty much gives me a Doris Lessing book every time I visit him. It's the story of a thirty-something British communist who lives in a squat with her partner of several years (who never has sex with her and is frankly pretty abusive) and a handful of strangers/comrades.

The thing I like most about this book is the exploration into the dynamics that take place within communal radical houses, whether squats or not. Who does all the work around the More...

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May 10, 2009

Georgia rated it:

This, my second Doris Lessing book, was certainly an interesting read. It is the story of a group of British communist "revolutionaries" who take over a squat in London with the real focus almost totally on one woman named Alice. Lessing describes Alice in detail through the bevy of contradictory thoughts she has over being a communist, her supposedly bourgeoisie divorced parents, her partner in crime Jasper--a secretly and secretive homosexual man--the two of which share an unhealthy More...

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Jan 16, 2011

Natalia Pì rated it:

Inizia bene, poi si accartoccia un po' su se stesso... Ho perso l'entusiasmo mentre lo leggevo, per vari motivi, in primis il fatto che i personaggi sono uno più insopportabile dell'altro: gli unici che sopporto sono quelli più 'esclusi' dal gruppo, Pat, Philip, Jim.
Il romanzo mi sembra essere molto invecchiato - è stato scritto nel 1985, contiene molti riferimenti al mondo, politico e non, inglese di quel tempo, dunque questo fatto è forse inevitabile. Ciò ha pesato nel mio non-apprezzamen More...

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Sep 27, 2011

Karlo Mikhail rated it:

Do not expect gunfights, car chases, and other flashy action scenes in Nobel Prize winning author Doris Lessing’s 1985 novel, The Good Terrorist. While Lessing’s heroine is the “good terrorist” which the title alludes to, she is no femme fatale. It is not a thriller by Le Carre or Ken Follet.*

Instead, what we get is a slice of the life of Alice Mellings, a committed full-time revolutionary active in London in he 1980s. We follow her as she relate with her comrades and cope with their More...

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Jul 08, 2010

Justin rated it:

In my review of Lolita, I talked about my growing aversion to writing that exists for its own sake and not primarily to express information. Doris Lessing is an excellent example of a writer that I feel uses language in the best way possible. The Good Terrorist's prose is clean, lean, vivid, and efficient, presenting us a world thoroughly credible and believable even as it takes place in a section of our society many people are unaware even exists. The milieu is 1980s London, back when squats More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 23, 2011

Bára rated it:

Persónur bókarinnar eru svo lokaðar inn í sjálfum sér að það var eiginlega bara óþolandi að dvelja með þeim. Hins vegar voru þær svo vel fram settar og stíllinn þannig að það var ekki hægt að hætta. Ég var alltaf að vonast eftir því að Alice tæki einhverjum róttækum breytingum en NEI. Hennar innsta eðli virtist vera að þjóna og þóknast, a.m.k. var ekkert sem benti til að þessir ofurpassívu eiginleikar ættu rætur að rekja til einhvers ofbeldis eða vanrækslu í uppvextinum. Sagan er kaldranaleg lýs More...

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Dec 27, 2010

Rob rated it:

As a lefty and former squatter this book contains dozens of painful home truths familiar to all of us involved in radical politics. The tiny left group removed from reality. The bragging about violence on protests. The lazy 'vanguard thinkers' who let everyone else do the work. All are present and correct in Lessing's unforgiving assault on a hapless bunch of middle class revolutionaries drifting from squat to squat in an attempt to escape from the real world. Alice, intelligent but consumed by More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 12, 2010

Robert added it

Doris Lessing has just won the Nobel Prize for literature. Curious, I decided to give this book a try (I don't believe it is the one that won the prize, but it caught my eye).

Having read it, there are a couple of observations:

First: Don't read the back cover. It tells you everything that happens, and nothing about the book. The entire book loses any chance to surprise if you read the back cover summary first.

Second: I can see why Doris Lessing is highly acclai More...

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Oct 28, 2008

Stephanie rated it:

My mother and I have resolved to read prize-winners. Note all of the ambiguities and catch-savers in that sentence. We did not resolve to only read prize-winners, nor did we specify what prizes fell into our category, nor did we specify whether we meant any book from the oeuvre of prize-winning authors or particularly a single prize-winning book. (See, e.g., my very first review on this site, in which I granted only one star to a Golden Dagger Award winner (detective novels get prizes too!)). More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 28, 2008

martin rated it:

Read this a year ago but forgot to update it on here.

Lessing isn't always the most optimistic of writers and this one left me feeling sad, even if I enjoyed the book. The blurb mentions wit which misleading gives the impression this book has some black humour in it. Not sure I found that...

I like the strength and depth of her characters and they are often why I read her books. Would-be well-meaning revolutionary Alice is someone we all know, earnest, honest, hard-working More...

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Jul 22, 2008

Jim rated it:

One comes away from reading Nobel Prize winner Lessing's book somewhat unnerved, as it's people with a polygot group of people unwilling to accept middle class values. They move in and out of a large house that had been scheduled for demoltion until Alice, the "Good Terrorist" joins them and helps restore electricity and water service, gets one of the tennants to remove the cement with which the city had fill the toilets, provides the financing by stealing from her estranged parents, More...

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Jan 16, 2012

Dorian rated it:

Wow! My favourite Lessing so far (there's a lot more work to make my way through). It's a rewrite of sorts of Corad's The Secret Agent. Ultimately, though, the book is less about terrorism than its title suggests. Instead its a brilliant portrayal of the ambivalence of the bourgeois lifestyle. One of the most intriguing analyses of the tension between form (making things) and chaos (destroying things). For me, Lessing's star only rises as a key 20th century writer.

2 comments like

Apr 13, 2010

finn rated it:

this is like the how-to guide for setting up squats in london in the 80s, & the how-not-to guide for violent revolution. it's a really, really slow build to the ending (so i'm not sure why the review on the copy i read called it page-turningly suspenseful), there's a ton of detail, & the characters are mostly all annoying & idiotic (though well developed). but this novel is really interesting. interesting, interesting. i'll think about it a lot.

2 comments like

Apr 24, 2011

Lori rated it:

Not my favourite of Lessing's books by far, The Good Terrorist is still eminently worth reading. Her descriptions of lost souls finding their way into 'revolutionary' squats and making a life there opened a completely new door for me -- I don't know what I thought the lives of terrorists were like, but every page was a surprise.

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Nov 11, 2011

Amblingbooks.com marked it as to-read

"A chilling, strangely compelling story-one that will haunt listeners for quite some time....essential for all literature collections; highly recommended." - Library Journal

Listen to The Good Terrorist on your smartphone.

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May 06, 2009

Karen rated it:

I'm on a bit of a Doris Lessing kick. Her characters are very well drawn and the language she uses is absolutely beautiful. This novel featured a lot of flashbacks to give the main character depth. I especially liked how she blocked out memories that weren't useful to her. It was a wonderful character study.

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Mar 30, 2009

Sarah rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Nov 18, 2010

Kristin rated it:

I had a bit of a hard time getting into it and felt it was very wordy but by the end, I understood why it was written in that manner and I really enjoyed the multi-layered feel of the book. Additionally, the character study of the main protagonist was fascinating.

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Mar 26, 2011

Sebastián rated it:

Compré este libro hace un año porque estaba inmoralmente barato (me costó 10 kilopesos con los diarios completos de Musil). Empecé a leerlo y no logré pasar de la página 60.

Hasta que lo retomé hace poco y en tres días re-leí lo que había leído en seis meses.

Lessing logra crear una subjetividad del personaje bastante detallada, con todo y los flashbacks y recovecos de pensamiento que tiene Alice mientras transcurre la historia. El "ingenuo optimismo" político de lo More...

1 comment like

Dec 10, 2010

Terry rated it:

I picked this off the shelf on a whim, and am glad I read it.

You know how it is going to end badly, but you cannot help but be caught up in the journey. I liked the well described characters, and got a taste of a world I would never otherwise know. -That is what fiction is for.

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