Helpful Score: 1
Outstandingly written novel. Riveting, deeply moving and so realistic you could reach out and touch the characters from your armchair. Lessing does a marvelously inventive job delving into the very soul of the matter at hand; twisting, soaring, diving, intertwining and exposing all that the soul does its best to keep hidden from each other and from themselves. You will pick this book up and not set it down again until finished, and you will want more.
Helpful Score: 1
I have finished the book and thought that the description of a woman going mentally ill was spot on. The relationship between the husband and wife seemed quite real. The cast system of the whites and non whites were painfully written , but interesting. I loved reading the book from a literary point of view but if all of her writings are this morose I am not sure that I want to go on with her. There was an utter lack of joy in the book. AT the end it seemed that she was spiraling into a deep split with reality. She was anticipating her death. As I was reading the book I thought that the ending would be that she and Moses would develop a very positive relationship and that in the end she would beg him to deliver her from her misery by killing her. But then the end seems to be a fulfillment of Mose,s rage of how he been treated by Mary. What did you make of the ending? Am I missing something?
