About the Book
I think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotions? Yes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without. What is the use of it? It is as if that old war is in my own memory, my own consciousness.
In this extraordinary book, the 2007 Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. Her father wanted the simple life of an English farmer, but shrapnel almost killed him in the trenches, and thereafter he had to wear a wooden leg. Her mother, Emily, spent the war nursing the wounded in the Royal Free Hospital after her great love, a doctor, drowned in the Channel.
In the fictional first half of Alfred and Emily, Doris Lessing imagines the happier lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war; a story that begins with their meeting at a village cricket match outside Colchester. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of the Great War, of the family's move to Africa, and of the impact of her parents' marriage on a young woman growing up in a strange land.
"Here I still am," says Doris Lessing, "trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free." Triumphantly, with the publication of Alfred and Emily, she has done just that.
About the Author :
Winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, Doris Lessing was one of the most celebrated and distinguished writers of our time, the recipient of a host of international awards. She wrote more than thirty books--among them the novels Martha Quest, The Golden Notebook, and The Fifth Child. She died in 2013.
Review :
"An intriguing work . . . [that] shimmers with precisely remembered details." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"Alfred and Emily explores the boundary where reality and imagination meet, through the use of a formally innovative structure. . . . Wonderfully evocative. . . . Glimpses into the creative process of one of the world's most gifted and socially engaged writers make Alfred and Emily a valuable addition to the Lessing oeuvre." -- Boston Globe
"An odd and powerful excursion into lost time. . . . a powerful reminder not only of Lessing's past but also of how each of us can return to our own and come back with something precious." -- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
"Alfred and Emily reveals why Lessing deserved literature's highest honor. There is a remarkable level of courage, honesty, and wisdom in Alfred and Emily. . . . Lessing, nearing 90, continues to surprise." -- USA Today
"Lessing has pushed the boundaries of the memoir form . . . fluidly conversational prose . . . thought-provoking." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"In its generosity of spirit, its shaped and contanied fury, Alfred & Emily is also an extraordinary, unconventional addition to Lessing's autobiography . . . but there isn't the slightest tone of valediction or summing up here. That's why she remains so vital: even in old age, she sounds as fierce and passionate as a girl." -- New York Times Book Review
"Laced with the subtlest of observations and the wryest of wit, it's a charming yet cutting story of rapid social change, the resiliency of women, class conflicts, the call to do good, and the confounding dynamics of marriage and parenthood. . . . This unusual marriage of fiction and memoir (and family photographs) results in a book at once spellbinding, rueful, and tragic." -- Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"A stirring exploration . . . gently yet deeply moving." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune
"She has never displayed her potent imagination to better effect, or her gift for probing realism . . . a profoundly moving memoir and portrait of a marriage." -- Wall Street Journal
"A clever, moving coupling of fiction and nonfiction. Alfred & Emily is a culmination of Lessing's ongoing interest in formal experimentation and the relationship between reality and imagination. It's also a testament to her ongoing literary vitality. . . . By allowing her readers this insight into the connection between autobiography and fiction, between form and content, she reaffirms fiction's powers and possibilities." -- Washington Post Book World
"An intriguing work...Writing with the incandescent clarity of her 88 years, Ms. Lessing...conveys the appreciation she now feels for the hardship of her parents' lives, and the anger she often felt as a young girl in rebellion against her mother...shimmers with precisely remembered details." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"A clever, moving coupling of fiction and nonfiction. ALFRED & EMILY is...a testament to [Lessing's] ongoing literary vitality." -- Washington Post Book World
"She has never displayed her potent imagination to better effect, or her gift for probing realism. The author's capacity to summon up her feelings so vividly is as effective as it is chilling...a profoundly moving memoir and portrait of a marriage." -- Wall Street Journal
"Lessing's taste for discomfiting truths is as evident as ever...as bracing and engaging as anything she has written." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Laced with the subtlest of observations and the wryest of wit...This unusual marriage of fiction and memoir (and family photographs) results in a book at once spellbinding, rueful, and tragic." -- Booklist (starred review)
"The novella is written in an unhurried, old-fashioned manner, and is filled with tender, accurate family scenes... the characters and settings are rich, and the story is touching...Lessing's memoir of her childhood is insightful and evocative...ALFRED & EMILY is eloquent and incisive on the subject of war." -- Rocky Mountain News
"...the voices, both Lessing's and her parents', are alive, fluid, anxious, believeable." -- Seattle Times
"A truly intriguing piece of work...the book is also an interesting glimpse of an empire and an era: of how the hazy, golden afternoon of the Edwardian Age faded into the dark of World War I and of the way that disappointed British citizens fueled their postwar dreams by leaving their country." -- Christian Science Monitor
"In its intimacy, incisiveness and literary construct, [Alfred and Emily] is her most powerful book: a bold exorcism of her parents' traumas in the first world war, and a thorough examination of her relationship with them...a poignant tribute...a final act of compassion." -- Newsweek (International Edition)
"Vivid, turbulent, fresh with raw emotion...Clarity and darkness, honesty and obscurity are tumbled together: the work of a writer who knows that the truths of the heart are hideously complicated" -- Sunday Telegraph
"One of the most remarkable books she has ever written." -- The Independent
