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 Bleak but Worthwhile July 31, 2008
Reader in Tokyo
This novel was published in 1950. As a picture of white society in Rhodesia just before/during World War II, its narrow codes of behavior and its fearful, hateful treatment of the natives, it was enlightening. As a description of a relationship between naive, flawed people and how their marriage slowly went wrong, it was absorbing. As a description of something that developed between the wife and a houseboy, though, in the last 40 pages it wasn't sufficiently clear for me to grasp exactly what occurred. I couldn't understand how far the relationship developed, why she knew what was going to happen, or why the houseboy changed the way he did. Were there limits in those days on what it was possible to write about a relationship that crossed the "color bar"?
Toward the novel's end, having brought these two characters together, the author must've intended to shift to a style that expressed the wife's breakdown, leaving things vague enough so that readers could project their own interpretations. But after the nuanced realism up to then, which showed so meticulously the main characters' expectations, weaknesses and frustrations, the stylistic change near the end felt jarring.
The author hinted that the wife's problems with men and intimacy could be traced to her relations with her parents, especially her father. And that she understood finally it was her mistake to rely on others to help her escape her problems, that she should've taken responsibility for her own life. It was interesting that the author, having given her some degree of self-awareness -- which put her far ahead of the book's other characters -- then had her break down and die. Instead of, say, escaping from her marriage and leaving Rhodesia.
 a disturbing book July 14, 2008
M. Thorton (France)
Through the tragic life of Mary, we are introduced to the difficult theme of racism in South Africa, and the relationships between black and white people. The main gift of Lessing is that she manages to show us the tensions between white and black people as if we were insiders in this microcosm since throughout the book, we learn the rules that cannot be broken by white people without consequences.
It's like a journey, the reader is first an outsider, understanding nothing to the relationship , but then we see the mistakes Mary made that brought her to her fate--giving a unique understanding to the situation.
But it's too dark and unhealthy to be a book I really liked.
 Unflinchingly grim, but full of terrific prose and insight May 1, 2008
R. G. Woodward (Southampton, Hampshire, UK)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Grass is Singing begins with a newspaper short about the murder of a white Rhodesian woman, Mary Turner, by a black house-servant. The `special correspondent' behind the article bluntly concludes `it is thought he [the murderer] was in search of valuables.' Doris Lessing, however, digs much deeper for the reasons behind this murder, exploring the decay of human relationships in unrelenting detail. The result is a dark, engrossing and convincing tale.
After a troubled childhood, Mary drifts through city life as a carefree young woman. She eventually feels compelled to find a serious partner, and her situation changes dramatically when she moves away from the city to marry Dick Turner, a farmer. Mary fails to embrace her new life on the farm: she shrinks from the world around. Lessing writes powerfully of the `double solitude' of Mary's loveless marriage to an incompetent husband. As Mary's marriage and state of mind decay, so do her surroundings; her torrid, squalid living conditions are rendered in uncomfortable detail.
In her frustration, Mary turns her anger upon the black Africans working on the farm, thereby adding to her isolation. One of the farm workers, Moses, comes to work in the house and his constant presence begins to erode the master-servant relationship between the white lady and the black labourer. When Charlie Slatter, the Turners' neighbour, offers to help out Dick and Mary, he acts out of concern for the status quo in white society rather than any notion of neighbourliness. His intervention does not save Mary from her brutal, harrowing fate.
Understandably, this is not a light read; Lessing is unstintingly bleak in her portrayal of Rhodesian society. Her writing, however, is sharp with insight, and makes this a compelling and highly memorable novel. This is among the very best books that I have read.
 gloom and doom December 9, 2007
the scribbler (Nottingham, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There is a lot packed into this short book - the advent of black power, the racism of Rhodesia and feminism. The themes are explored through a marriage which was doomed to fail from the outset on a farm which is going downhill slowly and inexorably under benign but inept management. The two main characters are depicted vividly as is life on the farm. The whole book is claustrophobic as it focuses in on just the two of them to the point where the only other 4 characters hardly feature much at all.
There is no way out for the marriage and for the farm as each chapter sees new problems encountered and not resolved for the dysfunctional husband and wife.
The prose is taut and unsparing and does not let the reader off the hook form beginning to end.
Black, White - and the Greyness of human existence December 5, 2007
Four Violets (Hertford UK)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
A almost uncomfortably raw story of the inevitable tragic and shocking consequences when Mary is taken from small town Rhodesia in the late 1940s to live on a remote farm with a husband she despises. Alone all day listening to the screaming of the cicadas, feeling the sun baking her through the tin roof, enduring stultifying aloneness and ground down by the fight against poverty, Mary is trapped and helpless. For the first time she encounters the black work force and their close proximity has a profound effect on her sensibilities.
The house servant Moses in particular exerts a powerful influence over her as her mind begins to disintegrate in the claustrophobic atmosphere. Past a certain point their developing, unwholesome relationship is left to our imaginations; but it consists more of mutual fascinated loathing than love.
Published in 1950, this is Doris Lessing's first novel. It took until 2007 for her to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Brought up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), she witnessed at first hand the racial tensions and entrenched attitudes of the era she depicts.
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