About this item
Highlights
- "[Lessing] is a pro, writing at the top of her powers, realistically, passionately, accessibly....
- Author(s): Doris Lessing
- 479 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
Set against the backdrop of the 1960s, the decade that changed the world, "The Sweetest Dream" is a riveting look from one of the greatest writers of our time at a group of people who dared to dream--and faced the inevitable clean up afterward.Book Synopsis
"[Lessing] is a pro, writing at the top of her powers, realistically, passionately, accessibly.... a stirring novel"--San Francisco Chronicle
Frances Lennox stands at her stove, bringing another feast to readiness before ladling it out to the youthful crew assembled around her hospitable table--her two sons and their friends, girlfriends, ex-friends and new friends fresh off the street. It's London in the 1960s and everything is being challenged and changed.
But what is being tolerated? Comrade Johnny delivers political tirades, then laps up the adolescent adulation before disappearing into the night to evade the clutches of his responsibilities. Johnny's mother funds all but finds she can embrace only one lost little girl--Sylvia, who leaves for a South African village dying of AIDS.
These are the people dreaming the Sixties into being and who, on the morning after, woke to find they were the ones taxed with cleaning up and making good.
From the Back Cover
Frances Lennox ladles out dinner every night to the motley, exuberant, youthful crew assembled around her hospitable tableher two sons and their friends, girlfriends, ex-friends, and ftesh-off-the-street friends. It's the early 1960s and certainly "everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." Except financial circumstances demand that Frances and her sons Eve with her proper ex-mother-in-law. And her ex-husband, Comrade Johnny, has just dumped his second wife's problem child at Frances's feet. And the world's political landscape has suddenly become surreal beyond imagination....
Set against the backdrop of the decade that changed the world forever, The Sweetest Dream is a riveting look at a group of people who dared to dream-and faced the inevitable cleanup afterward -- from one of the greatest writers of our time.
Review Quotes
"[Lessing] is a pro, writing at the top of powers, realistically, passionately, accessibly.... a stirring novel." -- San Francisco Chronicle
"Lessing's sage, level gaze is everywhere bought to bear ... [THE SWEETEST DREAM] is solidly wrought, deeply felt." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Irresistibly alluring ... [THE SWEETEST DREAM is] one of Lessing's most generous works." -- Book Magazine
"Lessing renders the spirit of an age as few writers can." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Wonderfully ripe characters ... grand-scale writing." -- Entertainment Weekly
"[Lessing's] acute political and artistic awareness makes her vision of our time rich and almost always freshly perceptive." -- The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
"A kind of a truth emerges ... as Lessing effortlessly captures what is a quintessential in each of her charming characters." -- The Guardian [London]
"One of out greatest novelists." -- Salon.com
"Lessing's most engrossing novel in many years." -- London Times Literary Supplement
"This book brings with it a rare literary pleasure - the kind you might have in suddenly coming upon a long lost novel by George Elliot or Balzac ...The haunting brilliance of her characters whom one feels one knows better than one's friends, the passion of her ideas and vision remain unblemished." -- The Independent (London)
"Anyone who regards THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK as one of the key books of the mid-20th century will find this disconcerting novel worth attention." -- The Sunday Telegraph (London)
"A great story with a Dickensian cast of memorable characters." -- Evening Standard
"[THE SWEETEST DREAM] is a beautifully made book." -- Financial Times [London]
"In its critique of mass-produced thinking and the long-term personal cost of war, THE SWEETEST DREAM approaches a universal truth: both damage people's capacity to give and receive love." -- The Observer (London)