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289th out of 319 books
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59 voters
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The Summer Before the Dark
As the summer begins, Kate Brown -- attractive, intelligent, forty five, happily enough married, with a house in the London suburbs and three grown children -- has no reason to expect anything will change. But when the summer ends, the woman she was -- living behind a protective camouflage of feminine charm and caring -- no longer exists. This novel. Doris Lessing's brilli...more
Paperback, 288 pages
Published
March 12th 1983
by Vintage
(first published April 12th 1973)
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Libbie
rated it
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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?'"
Fenixbird SandS
rated it
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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...more
On the cover of my 1968 printed paperback I found and bought from Bookmans, also The Golden Notebook is also being promoted! I...more
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 ...more
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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...more
ممدوح رزق
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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
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 represe...more
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.
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
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 w...more
Living in the head of a woman of another time (mid 20th Century) is alien enough that it might as w...more
This book was amazing. It is about a middle aged woman and her struggle with her identity, passion and family. Well written and powerful.
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,...more
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 ...more
Fenixbird SandS
rated it
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review of another edition
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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 Gold...more
On the cover of my 1968 printed paperback I found and bought from Bookmans, also The Gold...more
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.
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.
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.
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 ...more
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...more
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.
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.
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 comp...more
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 comp...more
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.
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.
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.
I think I would like this novel better if I were older—I don't yet have the... experience? distance? to really evaluate the evolution of Lessing's protagonist and decide if it rings true for me or not. I certainly thought the beginning of it was marvellously done, and Lessing impressed me as a marvellous writer when it comes to the internals—the sketching out of thoughts, of identity—but I became less and less certain of the novel as I reached the second half of it. Perhaps this was the reaction...more
The story chronicles Kate's introspective journey from the safe mother/wife to the deconstructed and stripped madwoman. Along the way she questions self, reality, and the pre-suppositions she think that society has place don her. A bit frustrating at times the way that Lessing probes through questions and constant mental banter, but eloquently written.
I grabbed this book of the shelf thinking I had never read it before. I quickly realized I did read it, but it was completely unmemorable for me. But being as I was likely drunk when I read it, I am not a very good frame of reference.
Enjoy Doris Lessing's writing. very indepth. This story was of a middle-aged woman (45!) and the discovery of herself. Very poignantly revealed how women are inculturated to be people-pleasers and the freedom of choice...
A história mostra-nos a viragem da juventude para a velhice, mostra-nos a loucura desse Verão de Kate que começa por ir trabalhar como intérprete em Londres e depois vai para a Turquia onde se involve numa relação com um americano mais novo que ele e que a leva para Espanha. Volta a Londres doente, sem saber de quê. Acaba por alugar um quarto em casa de uma rapariga com pouco mais de 19 anos e é aí que se confronta com a sua nova realidade - a meia idade.
I didn't enjoy this book as much as I wanted to, but it was still a pretty nice feminist time capsule from the early 70's, from one of the most feminist writers of the 20th century.
it's an absorbing read, but in the end it feels a bit too much like a structure with no real details to make you fall in love with it.
A really challenging and beautiful book. Both lyrical and full of feminist rage, this may be my favorite book of the year.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-life Crises/Inner Turmoil | 1 | 17 | Aug 19, 2008 08:40am | |
| what? and why? | 1 | 5 | Dec 30, 2007 03:41am |
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