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The Summer Before the Dark

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 735 ratings · 74 reviews

Nobel laureate Doris Lessing's classic novel of the pivotal summer in one woman's life is a brilliant excursion into the terrifying gulf between youth and old age.

As the summer begins, Kate Brown—attractive, intelligent, forty-five, happily married, with a house in the London suburbs and three grown children—has no reason to expect that anything will change. But by summer'...more

Paperback, 288 pages

Published July 14th 2009 by Vintage (first published 1973)

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Dec 30, 2007 Libbie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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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Aug 19, 2008 Fenixbird SandS rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: All Great "self talk" Vivid settings

Recommended to Fenixbird by: NY Times Book Review

Shelves: cultural-awareness, fiction

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 promoted! I fear th...more

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Jan 06, 2008 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 lear...more

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Nov 29, 2008 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 complexity o...more

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Aug 25, 2009 ممدوح رزق added it

ربة المنزل التي تسعى لإنقاذ أحلامها من الضياع والموت بعد أن تحولت إلى مجرد زوجة وأم .. المرأة التي عاشت تجارب مختلفة في كثير من القصص القصيرة والأفلام السينمائية والروايات لعل أجمل هذه التجارب بالنسبة لي حينما كانت هذه المرأة هي ( دورا ) في القصة الرائعة للكاتبة الإيطالية ( أنجلا ديانا دي فرنشيسكا ) : ( لا تجعليهم يجدونك ) ، وأيضا حينما كانت ( فرنشيسكا ) التي جسدتها بعبقرية ( ميريل ستريب ) بصحبة أحد أحب أيقوناتي السينمائية ( كلينت استوود ) في فيلمهما الساحر : ( جسور مقاطعة ماديسون ) وكذلك ( كيت...more

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Jun 06, 2012 wally rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lessing

this is the 2nd story from lessing for moi. her other story...forget the name...just came to me...The Fifth Child...i marked that as a favorite of mine. it is. it is a good story. i hope this is a good story, too. i'm already prejudiced in favor of it. imagine that.

begins:

at home

a woman stood on her back step, arms folded, waiting.

thinking? she would not have said so. she was trying to catch hold of something, or to lay it bare so that she could look and define; for some time now she had been "t...more

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Mar 18, 2011 Sandy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kate Brown is a 45-year-old London housewife and mother of four young adults who finds herself at a loose end. Neither her husband nor her children--all of whom are immersed in their own interests and do not spare her much thought at all--need her. She takes a job with an international civil service organization called Global Foods, the primary purpose of which is to host lavish conferences for well-heeled, jet-setting civil servants who are about as connected to the native workers they represen...more

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Oct 13, 2012 zespri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kate Brown is doing a lot of thinking. She is 45 and her family no longer need her. It's summer and the adult children are off having their own adventures, and her husband is working elsewhere.

Kate is offered a job which she reluctantly takes.

She takes a lover..

She gets very sick and leaves her lover..

She returns to London and rents a room in a hippy flat...

and she thinks...

Her journey of self- awareness continues throughout the book.

This was a wonderful read for me as Kate was going places...more

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Mar 10, 2008 Liza rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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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Jun 08, 2012 Callie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I deeply admire Doris Lessing. I love that she gives weight to women's lives, thoughts, emotions, opinions, experience. Her novels are treasures in my view.
I have to quote some of what she says about motherhood.

"With three small children, and then four, she had had to fight for qualities that were not even in her vocabulary. Patience. Self discipline, Self control. Self abnegation. Chastity. Adaptability to others--that above all. This always. These virtues, necessary for bringing up a family o...more I deeply admire Doris Lessing. I love that she gives weight to women's lives, thoughts, emotions, opinions, experience. Her novels are treasures in my view.
I have to quote some of what she says about motherhood.

"With three small children, and then four, she had had to fight for qualities that were not even in her vocabulary. Patience. Self discipline, Self control. Self abnegation. Chastity. Adaptability to others--that above all. This always. These virtues, necessary for bringing up a family of four on a restricted income, she did slowly acquire. ...She had been amused by big words for what every mother is expected to become. But virtues? Really? Really virtues? if so, they had turned on her, had become enemies. . ..it seeemed to her that she had acquired not virtues but a form of dementia."

"Kate had spent the morning walking slowly up and down up and down that long crammed street, taking in this truth, that the faces and movements of most middle aged women are those of prisoners or slaves. "

"She was obssessed from morning till night about management, about organization, about seeing how things ought to go, about the results of not acting like this or of acting like that. That was what all those years of acquiring virtues had led to: She and her contemporaries were machines set for one function, to manage and arrange and adjust and foresee and order and bother and worry and organise. To fuss. "

"Her family, she saw now, were quite aware of it. She was being treated by these independent individuals . . .husband, and young people as something that had to be put up with. Mother was an uncertain quantity. She was like an old nurse who had given her years to the family and must now be put up with. The virtues had turned to vices, to the nagging and bullying of other people. An unafraid young creature had been turned, through the long, grinding process of always, always being at other people's beck and call, always having to give out attention to detail, minuscule wants, demands, needs, events, crises, into an obsessed maniac. Obsessed by what was totally unimportant. "

"That was how people changed; they didn't change themselves : you got changed by being made to live through something , and then you found yourself changed."

Agree with her assessments or not, what I love about her is that she is taking a woman's experience seriously and thinking about it and describing it and trying to be as truthful as she can about what it might mean. She is not laughing it off, or making it into humorous episodes, the hardship and effects of motherhood. She is holding it up to the light and examining it and what she sees is painful but must be said anyway. I look at what she writes and think about my own mother. I think about myself as a mother and I have to reexamine old cliches. I have to take a hard look at what being a mother really means, not just accept what I have been taught or told.

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Oct 11, 2011 Laurel-Rain rated it 5 of 5 stars

Kate Brown, who lives in the London suburbs, is happily married and the mother of four children. But she has reached a point in her life when she feels extraneous. Invisible,even. As her husband gets ready to leave for a conference in the States, she ponders what her summer will be like. And then an opportunity presents itself that will allow Kate to spread her wings a bit and explore another world. As she leaves for the position as an interpreter, she has no idea what will be unleashed over the...more Kate Brown, who lives in the London suburbs, is happily married and the mother of four children. But she has reached a point in her life when she feels extraneous. Invisible,even. As her husband gets ready to leave for a conference in the States, she ponders what her summer will be like. And then an opportunity presents itself that will allow Kate to spread her wings a bit and explore another world. As she leaves for the position as an interpreter, she has no idea what will be unleashed over the next few months.

As we follow Kate's journey, we experience with her the joys of freedom, along with the risks. Will a foray into a brief affair bring her what is missing in her life? Or will the opportunity to earn her own money give her something she wants? But unexpected events turn these experiences into something quite different, as we see Kate's journey turn dark, with strange and symbolic dreams.

Then her journey takes her to a flat and a young girl who is on the verge of her life, while Kate is at a different crossroads. They share experiences and thoughts, and when the journey ends and the dark unfolds into springy lightness, Kate is ready to finally go home and rejoin her family. But she has a different perspective and a new way to be.

The rich symbolism throughout "The Summer Before the Dark (Vintage International)" reminded me once again why Lessing is such a great writer. Kate's recurring dream of a seal she is struggling to rescue and carry to safety reminds us that her nurturing aspects have controlled her life. She now must move on to something different. As she thinks about going home, she realizes something significant, as described in this passage:

"The mood she was in when she walked in at her front door again would be irrelevant: now that was the point, it was the truth. We spend our lives assessing, balancing, weighing what we think, we feel...it's all nonsense. Long after an experience which has been experienced as this or that kind of thought, emotion, and judged at the time accordingly—well, it is seen quite differently. That's what was happening, you think; and what you thought or felt about it at the time seems laughable, jejune."

There were parts of the novel that seemed very heavy with introspection, and the feelings evoked sometimes weighed me down. But then I moved on to the richly textured parts during which Kate arrives at her realizations. Definitely recommended for anyone who loves following a woman's journey toward finding herself. Five stars.
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Dec 28, 2009 Ideath rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: euro, crisis, aging, motherhood, bus-book, identity

Picked this up because i saw Lessing's name in a list of british sci-fi writers who are under-read in the US. Didn't realize that i was getting a book from before she veered into the genre (didn't realize that there had been a veer). So far, enjoying its subjectivity -- it is less surreal and mysterious than On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House, but i feel like they are closely related.

Living in the head of a woman of another time (mid 20th Century) is alien enough that it might as well be sci...more

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Dec 10, 2007 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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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Jun 14, 2012 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Those who like to be led into a story

Recommended to Maria by: Heard about her; Nobel Prize recipient

Shelves: fiction

At first this book grabbed me; it wasn't the events or the characters that were interesting, but the rhythm and the tone. It was a hard rush at first, but then I found myself continuously diving into the book like diving into a cool pool; it woke me up, inspired me to pay attention.

Lessing included little side stories that possibly were included to support the development of the main character, but that would be too cliche. There must have been a reason for those stories to exist within their o...more At first this book grabbed me; it wasn't the events or the characters that were interesting, but the rhythm and the tone. It was a hard rush at first, but then I found myself continuously diving into the book like diving into a cool pool; it woke me up, inspired me to pay attention.

Lessing included little side stories that possibly were included to support the development of the main character, but that would be too cliche. There must have been a reason for those stories to exist within their own right(young lover, dream, young woman on the verge of marriage). These stories helped the reader progress from looking at the main character from a distance, as if in a family picture, to looking at her directly in the face, as if the reader is the mirror.

It was rich contextually, but not layered like an onion. There was flow, and it was easy to speed through it when I wasn't reading other things. The transition from scene to scene was smooth like how life progresses from scene to scene whether we want that to happen or not.

There is a lot of emphasis on the physical, particularly hair; the physical ages more than our memories. No matter the age dreams can be fresh.

The scenes that the main character inhabited were not the best she imagined, and maybe the discomfort gave her time to evaluate how she is displayed to herself in a mirror or to others. In fact, she made a test to see how men reacted to her depending on what she was wearing.

Questions to ask:
What is the importance of the dream, the young lover from Spain, and Maureen to the character development of Kate?

How do Kate's travels and mastery of language support or conflict with how she is perceived when she is first introduced?

Kate spent a summer away from her family, and the epectation would be that she changed. Do you think the change is permanent, or can a permanent change to her lifestyle only happen gradually over years?

Would I read it again: Yes
Would I recommend it: Yes
Was the prose elevated to poetry: not really, but it got under my skin

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Dec 15, 2008 Pat rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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, baby, regar...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Sule rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was expecting much from this novel. I read The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook. Especially, in The Golden Notebook I liked her writing style, her experimentation with narrative forms. But in this novel,only the theme interested me, I personally found the narrative structure quite plain when I compared it to The Golden Notebook, which was structrurally very innovative and which always required the reader's active imagination and participation into the the text. The theme is interesting...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Mommalibrarian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: womens-issues

One character, rambling, internal monologue on what it means to be the wife of a philandering husband, mother to four grown children, person without personal interests. Kate Brown does discover that she is really good at her chance job as a simultaneous interpreter and hospitality administrator but it does not please her. She is, in that life and in her former family sphere, a person who feeds off the opinions of others. This is the discovery of her 'Summer before'. I suspect the sequel (if ther...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Queirosiana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Em O Verão Antes das Trevas, Doris Lessing atinge um dos momentos mais altos da sua carreira, quer pelo rigoroso contorno das figuras, quer pelo desdobramento da intriga, quer pela caracterização das personagens. O Verão Antes das Trevas impõe à nossa admiração uma figura literária de primeira grandeza e traz ao nosso convívio uma escritora de grande plano (Wook)"

Kate Brown é a personagem principal. A história inicia-se no principio do Verão e termina no fim do mesmo e a mudança que ocorre nest...more

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Mar 29, 2009 Fenixbird SandS rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Fenixbird by: NY Times Nobel Prize Review

Shelves: fiction, passions-life-crises

loved this book. Found used hardcover! 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 Not...more

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Feb 20, 2011 Holly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wan't thrilled with this book, but recently discovered Doris Lessing and wanted to read something she had written. And I would like to read another novel of hers - it's not that this was a bad book, just not a great one. In this book the obvious trajectory of empathy is towards the middle-aged woman and the psychological terrain journeyed therein ... and there you seem to have it. A great book, I believe, needs more than this noteworthy but limited and not so terribly compelling muse.

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Apr 10, 2013 Paula rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel, mostly an interior monologue of a single character, made me slow down to pay attention. Main character Kate Brown goes "off the grid" of her life for one summer, questioning the value of all the "fuss" that had consumed much of her life. Even though she concludes that there's not much point to her busy life, she finds herself homesick for her husband and family, and returns to all of it in the end. Felt a little dated, but still a thought-provoking journey.

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Nov 05, 2011 Katri rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Annan kolme tähteä kahden sijaan lähinnä sen takia, koska pidin alkupuoliskosta todella paljon. Kirja kuvasi kotiäidin mielenmaisemaa, kun lapset muuttavat pois kotoa.

Alku oli tosiaan jees, keskivaiheilla alkoi mennä oudoksi ja loppu oli ihan kummallinen. Toisaalta kirja oli mielenkiintonen ajankuvauksena. Kun naisella oli lähinnä vaihtoehtona mennä naimisiin mahdollisimman aikaisin ja saada paljon lapsia.

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May 21, 2008 Brandon O'Neill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 the funn...more

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Sep 27, 2010 Hope rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hmm. I both really liked and hated this book. It definitely makes the reader uncomfortable as Kate agonizes over whether her life has been wasted as a wife and mother as she transitions in to "old age." (She's only 45, but this was written in the 70s...nowadays 45 is the new 35.) The characters are caricatures but Lessing manages to make them compelling. The plot twists somewhat unexpectedly, but then stalls for the last one hundred pages or so as the development of the relationship of Maureen a...more

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Jul 25, 2011 GalwayGirl added it · review of another edition

Thought provoking, can be depressing but intriguing and incites deep contemplation and analysis of one's own life. Intriguing in those moments when you recognize something of yourself in the character and can finally identify some feelings you have had but have not yet understood.

But overall fairly depressing and while you feel good about the journey of self analysis she has completed, it does leave you with a feeling of despair.

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Jan 18, 2012 Magdelanye rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: displacement, social-commentary, modern-fiction, existential-crises

Timing is all, and it seems like on first reading I completely missed the richness of the insights recorded in this short book. Skimming through it as a young adult, I could not imagine myself bogged down by such a miasma of self-deception as the narrator slogged her way through in search of her own authentic self.

I certainly was never going to allow myself to be blinkered!

Suffice to say, now that I am the age of the protagonist,I marvel at her courage and i found myself completely engaged by he...more

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Feb 19, 2013 Grandpa Joe rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is about a middle-aged housewife, happily married to her philandering husband, and who, with her husband, has successfully raised four children rethinking her identity during one adventurous summer of her life. It was an okay read for me but I was not particularly enamored with the book.

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Mar 08, 2010 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You know how some books change your life? This book IS my life. It's one of those, "Wow, I read this at the perfect moment in my life" kind of books. A magnificent feminist manifesto and an account of a woman coming of age in mid-life. Existential crisis resolved. How satisfying.

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Mar 24, 2011 Cath Murphy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

It's probably typical of me that this minor work is the first of only two of Lessing's works I have read (the other is The Good Terrorist). Economical and piercing account of a year in a woman's life in the slippery ground between middle and old age.

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Jul 02, 2011 Pauliina added it

Jäi kesken. Vaikka Doris Lessingin kirjoista yleensä pidänkin, niin tässä oli jotain niin ärsyttävää että ainakaan nyt en jaksa edes yrittää. Päähenkilö oli raivostuttava murehtija, minkä johdosta kirja junnasi kokoajan paikoillaa eikä mitään oikeasti tapahtunut.

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About Doris Lessing

Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Oliv...more Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).(less)

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“So very Russian," people around were murmuring. That they did meant this was an audience pretty low down on the scale of sophistication, otherwise they would be saying, "Just like us, isn't it?” — 1 person liked it

“For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not.” — 1 person liked it

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