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    Adore: A Novella
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    Adore: A Novella
    Unavailable
    Adore: A Novella
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Adore: A Novella

    By Doris Lessing

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions.”  — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

    Shocking, intimate, often uncomfortably honest, Adore reaffirms Doris Lessing’s unrivaled ability to capture the truth of the human condition.

    Roz and Lil have been best friends since childhood. But their bond stretches beyond familiar bounds when these middle-aged mothers fall in love with each other's teenage sons—taboo-shattering passions that last for years, until the women end them, vowing to have a respectable old age. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 17, 2013
    ISBN9780062318978
    Unavailable
    Adore: A Novella
    Author

    Doris Lessing

    Doris Lessing was one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". She died in 2013.

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    Reviews for Adore

    3.5/5

    133 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This book contains four novellas that show off Doris Lessing wide-ranging ideas and her facility with plot and language. Not as wonderful as some of her works, but very enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      This collection of four novellas is vintage Doris Lessing. Published in 2003, it encompasses many of her signature themes: the process of aging, class and race relationships, the bittersweet pain of love and passion, and a recognition that how a civilization cares for its environment reflects its health.The title novella, "The Grandmothers" is a wry tale of two women who grow up as best friends, are young mothers together and have tangled relationships with each other's sons."Victoria and the Staveneys" examines the intertwined relationship of Victoria, growing up in council flats, orphaned and burdened with the care of her dying aunt, with a self-absorbed theatrical family that has a socialist bent.In "The Reason for It," we have the chronicle of the decay of an ancient civilization, destroyed because its guardians could not recognize the results of their misjudgement.The final novella, "A Love Child," has the most fully developed protagonist and plot. James, drafted into the British army at the onset of WWII, is sent off to India on a hellish ship transport. While the ship docks in Cape Town to refuel and resupply, he has a passionate fling with a young matron. The rest of the war and the rest of his life are delineated by his obsession and memories of those brief days.Although the reviewers in The Guardian and The New York Times found the collection uneven -- I found it very satisfying and reflective of the varieties of Lessing's fictions.
    • 3/5
      I loved the story [The Grandmothers] but could not face completing any of the other stories in this collection. [[Doris Lessing]] is a brilliant writer, but her subjects are too harsh.
    • 5/5
      great stories. loved "the reason for it" and "love child" the most.
    • 5/5
      I predicted a year before it happened that Doris Lessing would get the Nobel Prize. I haven't read very much of her work, maybe five of her novels and none of the rest of her works, but I just felt that the depth and breadth of her output was deserving of that acknowledgement. So I was very happy when she got the award and I was determined to read more of her work. Thanks to BookCrossing I've added one novel and one book of short stories to my list. I think my favourite of these four stories was "Victoria and the Staveneys". I found it explored a lot of the same themes that her books do but each time there is a unique perspective. I just thought Victoria's antipathy to country life was hilarious, a side of Lessing I had not seen before. I also liked "The Reason for It". At the time she got her Nobel Prize someone said (perhaps on BookCrossing) that she was the first science fiction writer to get the Nobel. And this story shows her aptitude for speculative fiction (as I think it would be called). I thought it completely conveyed the society with its history and present problems and it perhaps even acted as a lead in to "The Love Child". When I read the Kipling poem that the Colonel read out (Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time's eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die:) I wondered if that poem had been the inspiration for "The Reason for It". I think Lessing is a genius. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to read more of her. I have katayoun's address so it will be mailed off to her asap. I hope it gets to Iran all right. Since kobie03 put a bookmark with the words to O Canada on it (where have I seen those before?)I thought I would put one of the French language bookmarks in that varykino sent to me last year.
    • 4/5
      I’m still trying to work out how long a piece of writing has to be if it’s called a novel. The Grandmothers is a set of four “short novels,” according to its cover. But how is that different from four novellas?The first, and title, story is an intriguing family tale of just 53 pages. Two fathers. Two daughters. Two grandmothers. And two mothers who enter only peripherally into visits to a seaside restaurant. The waitress envies their perfect lives, which maybe aren’t as perfect as they seem, and the reader is drawn to view images of past innocence with almost reluctant curiosity. A startling, odd, sad tale, and a fascinating read.The second story, of Victoria and the Staveneys, is an all-too-real description of a promising life turned around by circumstance, and a vivid depiction of the tolerance, love and affection that accompany expectations. I wanted more for Victoria, and in the end, I guess she got more than she was offered. In the end she wasn’t who anyone tried to make her, but maybe she wasn’t all she could have made herself either.The Reason for it is the shortest tale of the four, an odd story of how quickly a culture falls apart. It reads innocently and tragically through the eyes of an elderly man, but it’s echoes of modern life can’t be entirely accidental.And finally, A Love Child, at 117 pages, is an amazing depiction of wartime Britain and the life of a man who grows up between the wars. Introduced to communism, he finds poetry. Introduced to sickness, he finds love. Introduced to success, he keeps himself to himself and tries to analyze the reason others care for him. But through it all he misses the truth of how he should care for others. A sad story, but totally engrossing.So now I still don’t know how long a novel has to be. But perhaps if you’re a writer of Doris Lessing’s caliber it really doesn’t matter. I’d certainly recommend the book, and I enjoyed the time spent meeting her characters.
    • 1/5
      the writing style made it very difficult to follow.
    • 2/5
      mes ses englais. nul
    • 1/5
      Confusing and difficult to immerse yourself in the plot
    • 5/5
      l
    • 3/5
      This book was only 70 pages long, and I finished it in an hour. It was good, not great. A little odd. The plot centers around two lifelong friends who, in their middle age, start affairs with each others' teenage sons. The book glosses over a lot of the more...sensitive parts of the story, so it wasn't as cringeworthy as you might think.
    • 3/5
      This is a standalone republication of the novella ?The Grandmothers?, originally published in the collection The grandmothers: four short novels, to tie in with the release of the French/Australian film Two Mothers (2012), which was puzzlingly retitled Adore in some countries. (There was a door in the film, but it didn't seem particularly important to the plot...)I read this shortly after seeing the film, so it was most interesting to notice the various little things that had been changed from novella to film. In this case, the story is so short that there was little need to cut material out, but the film did make one major change to the timing (Roz is separated from her husband about ten years earlier in the story than in the film) and a few more subtle changes to the background (e.g. by giving the women different jobs) all of which seemed to be designed to enhance the element of pastiche soap-opera already implicit in the bourgeois Australian beach setting. Lessing?s basic theme of a friendship between two women that creates a kind of family more important than sex, marriage, or what other people may think of them seems to carry through quite clearly from one medium to the other.As a story, it's strong and memorable, and I can easily see why it would be the title story of any collection it appeared in, but I'm not sure if it's quite strong enough to meet the reader's expectations from a solo publication. Everything depends on establishing and justifying the central conceit of the plot, but there's not really all that much beyond that. If you hadn't seen the film, you'd probably find this a bit disappointing.