The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing's first novel, based in the former Southern Rhodesia. It is a story of race, class, and human emotions. The book opens with a death and then gradually builds up the events

leading to that death - in a remarkable detached and almost clinical fashion. The person causing the death of the farmer's wife id announced almost immediately. Things aren't quite what they seem. The Turners (the couple at the centre of this tale) are remarkably unsuccessful in all aspects of their lives. The farm is a disaster - Jonah is the nickname used by their neighbours for Turner's infallible ability to select the wrong crops for each season. Neither the workers' shop, nor the house is well constructed. They make a profit on nothing, and Mary has the worst kind of background to become a farmer's wife. She hates the native workers, can't stand her female neighbours, can't bear the heat, has no household abilities. The book looks (very bluntly) at white attitudes to the native population of South Africa. Equally it shows the white dependency, the sort of people attracted to the life of the farmer in South Africa, and how those newly arrived from England change rapidly their views of 'the native question'. This is really a very strong, powerful, shocking book, and traces the psychological breakdown and disorder of these two inadequate people. The language at times is hard for the modern reader - it is racially offensive in the tone and content. And yet this is a remarkable book. Rating: 7/10