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Alfred and Emily
In this profoundly moving book, Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. In the fictional first half of "Alfred and Emily," she imagines the happier lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actuall
...morePaperback, 274 pages
Published
November 1st 2009
by Harper Perennial
(first published January 1st 2008)
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What a strange read!
I must admit that I was a little intimidated to read it. Let's face it: the whole Author Was A 2007 Nobel Laureate thing is a bit overwhelming for a girl whose last couple reads were a YA novel and a poorly written mystery. For the first half, at least, though, the book is downright delightful. I loved it - I was ready to go out and read everything Doris Lessing has ever written. Then, abruptly, the beautiful fiction ends and some seemingly random nonfictio...more
I must admit that I was a little intimidated to read it. Let's face it: the whole Author Was A 2007 Nobel Laureate thing is a bit overwhelming for a girl whose last couple reads were a YA novel and a poorly written mystery. For the first half, at least, though, the book is downright delightful. I loved it - I was ready to go out and read everything Doris Lessing has ever written. Then, abruptly, the beautiful fiction ends and some seemingly random nonfictio...more
I m fascinated by the idea of alternate histories, and Doris Lessing s idea of giving her own parents an alternate history seems particularly daring. These are real people, people she knew intimately, and the suggestion they might have lived differently, in a way that would even prevent Lessing herself from being born, has great potential. But the story never quite drew me in. [return][return]I was impressed that Lessing chose not to make the alternate history all sunshine and light. The war h...more
In Alfred & Emily, groundbreaking author Doris Lessing returns to the subject matter explored in her 1994 autobiography, Under My Skin. Fans will recognize common themes and details, but Lessing's outlook and tone have softened. Critics were touched by her genuine attempt to understand her overbearing, self-absorbed mother, though her writing is still tinged with resentment. Lessing's fictional novella is no fairy tale, but most critics found it unconvincing. Why invent a fictional life if it is
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I gave this book a strong four, because of the entire concept. In the first half of the book the author sets up a story of two people whose paths cross as children and whose lives continue to cross throughout adulthood, but each in their own separate realm. Each person has the early background, the persona of the author's own parents. In the second half of the book the life story of Doris Lessing’s parents is actually revealed; and how differently their lives have played out, in Lessing’s fee...more
"That war, the Great War, the war that would end all war, squatted over my childhood. The trenches ere as present to me as anything I actually saw around me. And here I still am, trying to get our from under the monstrous legacy, trying to get free.
"If I could meet Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh now, as I have written them, as they might have been had the Great War not happened, I hope they would approve the lives I have given them. -- Doris Lessing from Alfred and Emily
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"If I could meet Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh now, as I have written them, as they might have been had the Great War not happened, I hope they would approve the lives I have given them. -- Doris Lessing from Alfred and Emily
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Is it a novel, that is, fiction? Is it non-fiction, a twin biography of her parents? In fact Alfred & Emily is both. It is kept in the fiction shelves, among other true works of that genre, in the National Library (KL); the librarians presume it to be this. The first half of the book reads just like fiction. It tells the story of one Alfred and another of Emily. Unlike in real life, when they were Lessing’s parents, these two met at a cricket match, but later married other people inste...more
A combination novella/memoir, the first half about what her parents' lives would have been like if not for World War I, the second, the reality. Like everyone else who lived through that time, their lives were pretty well ruined by the war.
I liked the novella - she didn't give them perfect lives, but real ones that included regret and ambiguity. The memoir section was interesting too, about their life on a farm in Rhodesia. Her mother imagined it would be like Happy Valley in Kenya, ...more
I liked the novella - she didn't give them perfect lives, but real ones that included regret and ambiguity. The memoir section was interesting too, about their life on a farm in Rhodesia. Her mother imagined it would be like Happy Valley in Kenya, ...more
It's an appealing exercise...imagining away the events that led your parents to completely screw up your life. I had read the context for this book some time ago...essentially the author won her Nobel Prize in part on the eloquent vitriol which is essentially the most durable legacy from her mother. Both of Doris Lessing's parents were irreparably damaged by WWI; trying to settle a farm in Africa didn't ameliorate their pain. WWI looms so large over Lessing's childhood that in her eighties, sh...more
I picked this book up on a whim, and I'm sorry I did. I thought that the premise sounded interesting - Lessing imagines, for the first half of the book, a life without WWI for her parents. A life where they never married and never had children. The second half details what their lives really were like, with WWI included. See? Sounds interesting. Bonus: Lessing won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature the year before this book was published.
Yeah, not so much. This book drags, as if a fe...more
Yeah, not so much. This book drags, as if a fe...more
I think I like the idea of this book slightly better than I enjoyed reading it, but it was worth it to be confronted by the idea. Lessing takes the lives of her two parents, Alfred and Emily, and reinvents them--writes their stories as if they were unaffected by World War I. Her father, in actuality, lived with deep psychological trauma and a wooden leg because of his time in the trenches and her mother lost her great love and instead led a life as a mother that didn't allow her become the woman...more
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Both of Doris Lessing's parents were seriously damaged by the Great War and Lessing wrote this "novel" to imagine what their lives might have been like if the war had never happened. What I liked about this book was that these invented lives were not ideal or perfect, but full of all the regular ups and down of which any life is composed. Alfred and Emily are still constrained by the social forces of their time, but do not suffer the wrenching dislocations and, in her father's case, a...more
I am puzzled by this book. As a Nobel Prize winner I have pretty high expectations. Even though the first half is delightful and picturesque I feel it lacks in some kind of honesty. It doesn't really do it for me. And I am waiting to begin with the second half, not really knowing if my interest is up for it.
Apparently, my interest was insufficient. After a week of considering whether to read on or not, I decided not to. Though my boyfriend thinks it unreasonable and lazy not to fini...more
Apparently, my interest was insufficient. After a week of considering whether to read on or not, I decided not to. Though my boyfriend thinks it unreasonable and lazy not to fini...more
Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing is an intimate book containing two stories about Lessing’s parents, a novella and a memoir, in one volume. Nobel laureate Doris Lessing imagines what the lives of her parents might have been had World War I not intervened, exploring their personalities, pursuing their strengths and their loves. Then, in the same book she tells the story of their lives as it was, and the marriage they settled for, after the war took her father away from his sweetheart and his hom...more
Bello, incisivo ed originale, come tutti i libri di Doris Lessing.
E’un romanzo sulla vita dei suoi genitori, composto da due parti distinte : nella prima l'autrice racconta una delle loro possibili vite se la prima guerra mondiale non li avesse colpiti. Una sliding doors letteraria: cosa sarebbe successo se avessero vissuto vite autonome e senza l’ esperienza della guerra? Che persone sarebbero diventate? La seconda parte, invece, narra la reale storia dei due protagonisti.
E...more
E’un romanzo sulla vita dei suoi genitori, composto da due parti distinte : nella prima l'autrice racconta una delle loro possibili vite se la prima guerra mondiale non li avesse colpiti. Una sliding doors letteraria: cosa sarebbe successo se avessero vissuto vite autonome e senza l’ esperienza della guerra? Che persone sarebbero diventate? La seconda parte, invece, narra la reale storia dei due protagonisti.
E...more
What a strange book. It's in two parts: the first novella is based on what she thinks her parents’ life might have been had things been different at the start; it is lightweight and formulaic yet plodding and leaden. They did this. Then they did that. It doesn't seem that Lessing could write anything that trite. Yet her parents' actual biography that follows is totally different – a sensitive and insightful account of two people who were completely unprepared and unsuited for Rhodesian farm...more
Non leggetelo tutto d'un fiato.
E' un libro di respiri diversi, lunghi e corti.
Va bevuto a piccoli sorsi.
E soprattutto con una pausa decisa fra la prima e la seconda parte: bisogna concedersi il tempo di assimilare le vite fittizie che la Lessing regala ai propri genitori se la Gran Bretagna non fosse mai stata coinvolta nella Prima Guerra Mondiale, prepararsi al distacco da quei personaggi che sembrano ancora piu' reali di quelli descritti nella seconda parte, quando la Lessing narra la vita che...more
E' un libro di respiri diversi, lunghi e corti.
Va bevuto a piccoli sorsi.
E soprattutto con una pausa decisa fra la prima e la seconda parte: bisogna concedersi il tempo di assimilare le vite fittizie che la Lessing regala ai propri genitori se la Gran Bretagna non fosse mai stata coinvolta nella Prima Guerra Mondiale, prepararsi al distacco da quei personaggi che sembrano ancora piu' reali di quelli descritti nella seconda parte, quando la Lessing narra la vita che...more
In this 2008 memoir Doris Lessing has combined the narrative into two novellas. The first half of the story opens in 1902, and is a fictional reimagining of the lives of her mother and father, Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh. This story is told from the point of view that these two people did not marry each other and thus pursued a totally imagined life, one in which the 1914-18 war did not take place. The second half of the narrative gives the reader the truthful account, and describes the life...more
And dimly she realised one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is, really, only the mechanism of reassumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then...more
The idea behind this book is interesting. Unfortunately, the style is disconnected. The second part of the book, where the author contrasts the fictionalized first half with the biographical reality, is impossibly disjointed. There is an overwhelming negativity toward her mother that borders on self pity. If the author's intent is, as stated on the back jacket, 'to get out from under that monstrous legacy', then, from my perspective as a reader, I don't think she made much progress.
An interesting concept -- part memoir, part fiction, telling the story of her parents both as they were and how they might have been had World War I not happened. The end product is a little disappointing though: Not a very compelling novel and a memoir that, while interesting, doesn't delve deep enough.
I thought there might be more exploration of the gravity of history and fate and how our lives are shaped by forces beyond our control. Echoes of this, perhaps, but not enough to sust...more
I thought there might be more exploration of the gravity of history and fate and how our lives are shaped by forces beyond our control. Echoes of this, perhaps, but not enough to sust...more
Perhaps this wouldn't have been published if the author wasn't a Nobel laurete. It is, however, an interesting account of her childhood in South Africa. She describes how her childhood was overshadowed by World War I--her father fought in the trenches, and her mother worked in the war hospitals. The most interesting passages were those in which she describes how the world has changed, for better or for worse, in her long lifetime.
I was really disappointed in this book. Bought it on a whim at the train station before long ride when I didn't have anything to read. I'd always wanted to read Doris Lessing's work, but this one was clearly not the one to start with. The first half was OK, not great, though. The second half was a rambling, stream-of-conscience mess. It's quite possible that it was all over my head, of course.
Lessing's parent's lives in actuality were devastated by World War I. So she has written a book of which about the first half or more imagines what their lives might have been like had the war not intervened. Their unhappiness seems to have affected Lessing, too, throughout her life. But the putting together of fact and imagination to analyze lives lived is fascinating.
I must have missed something because I just expected so much more from a Pulitzer Prize winning book and Doris Lessing. I loved the premise of this. The whole re-inventing your parents life story was so intriguing! This is really two separate novellas and while I found the beginning of the first novella engaging by about the middle I was struggling to finish it. The 2nd novella I just found tedious and honestly just never finished it.
Maybe some day, when I'm older and smarter I'll g...more
Maybe some day, when I'm older and smarter I'll g...more
J'aime beaucoup le principe de ce livre dans lequel Doris Lessing choisit de raconter dans une première partie une vision romancée de la "vie idéale" que ses parents auraient pu mener et dans une seconde partie, analyser leur couple pendant son enfance et leurs maux en tant que témoins des horreurs de la première guerre mondiale.
J'ai eu une petite préférence pour la première partie que j'ai trouvée plus rythmée, toutefois je suppose que ce devait être recherché afin de mieu...more
J'ai eu une petite préférence pour la première partie que j'ai trouvée plus rythmée, toutefois je suppose que ce devait être recherché afin de mieu...more
I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Doris Lessing. The first half of this book is a fictional story of the lives her parents might have led if they hadn't married each other, and if her father hadn't been injured - physically and psychologically - in the war. The second half of the book is the true story of her parents' sad and difficult lives.
Doris Lessing's premise was interesting. She wrote a fictionalized version
of her parents' lives - if they were not scarred by WWI (Alfred was a vet, Emily a nurse.) It was a more melancholy view than I'd expected. The second part was supposed to be an exploration of their lives as they really were.
It was a nonlinear jumble, jumping from their life on a farm in Rhodesia to events of later years.
of her parents' lives - if they were not scarred by WWI (Alfred was a vet, Emily a nurse.) It was a more melancholy view than I'd expected. The second part was supposed to be an exploration of their lives as they really were.
It was a nonlinear jumble, jumping from their life on a farm in Rhodesia to events of later years.
I liked the alternate realities that Lessing used. the novella took the facts of her parents lives and fictionalized them and the biography gives the reader the author's view of her childhood and parents. Lessing seems to have had an interesting childhood , but one that left scares especially from her mother. Interesting read.
Loved the first, imagined section of this book - writing your parents' imagined life with the freedom of a novelist is a brilliant idea. Sadly I found the second half, the 'real' tale of her parents' life, to be rather scattered and incidents almost random. Still, well worth reading, especially for the insights it offers on her own writing. Made me want to go back and read Martha Quest (it's been a VERY long time).
I dub this unfinishable. About 20 pages from the end, I completely lost interest. I loved the idea of combining fiction and nonfiction, the fact that Lessing gives her parents the lives they always wanted. The first half is quite lovely. But the book completely fizzled for me in the nonfiction section.
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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
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