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The second volume of Doris Lessing's extraordinary autobiography covers the years 1949-62, from her arrival in war-weary London with her son, Peter, and the manuscript for her first novel, The Grass is Singing, under her arm to the publication of her most famous work of fiction, The Golden Notebook. She describes how communism dominated the intellectual life of the 1950s and how she, like nearly all communists, became disillusioned with extreme and rhetorical politics and left communism behind. Evoking the bohemian days of a young writer and single mother, Lessing speaks openly about her writing process, her friends and lovers, her involvement in the theater, and her political activities. Walking in the Shade is an invaluable social history as well as Doris Lessing's Sentimental Education.

Customer Reviews (6)

Walking in the Shade by Doris Lessing
Here is a continuation of Doris Lessing's autobiography, now focused on her adulthood in London. Here also is Lessing's trademark sense of humor, thoroughly wry and intellectual, and her down-to-earth views of the world around her. This time she focused mainly on her experiences in travel, having different paramours, and her heavy involvement with the Communist Party. At times it is great escapism- Vanessa Redgrave, Winston Churchill, and even Charlie Chaplin make appearances, and who wouldn't want to read about a midnight walk through London in Lessing prose? Other times, when the story goes through long stretches in the British CP, it becomes heavy reading, but always oddly interesting. What makes this book a real treat, though, is when Lessing writes about how she approaches her craft; how she gets inspiration, particularly for The Golden Notebook, from her friends, her write-nap-write rotation while her son is at school, the adventures she has getting her works published, striving to make ends meet, and dealing with being a pseudo-celebrity (even though you know she probably detests that word). It's refreshing to read about the neuroses dealt with by a writer who would go on to win the Nobel Prize, but then again what else would you expect from Lessing? This s a must read for fans of her original memoir.

Walking in the shade of communism.
This second part of Doris Lessing's candid biography, which depicts her difficult beginnings in London, is a more bitter report than the first one. It is full of personal and ideological disappointments.

Like so many young intellectuals in Europe, she finds shelter in the leftist Church (with capitalism as hell, Lenin, Stalin or Mao as Christ the Saviour, and Utopia as heaven) and becomes a believer in heart and soul. She still has difficulties to believe why she was so blind (even after a trip to Russia) and stayed like many others so long with the communist movement.
The agonizing psychological struggle to become an apostate is very emotionally told.

What saved her was art, in which she has a limitless belief: it can overthrow world powers.

This is a moving, uninhibited and realistic work, exemplary for many idealistic but wilfully deceived young people in the ninteen fifties and sixties. Outsiders willing to write her biography will not have many more 'secrets' to reveal.
Not to be missed.

Liked it, didn't love it
I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as Volume I, UNDER MY SKIN. But it's a fascinating book for 2 reasons.

1. The light it sheds on the relationship between fiction & autobiography, & the glimpse it gives of the novelist's mind, how experience is tranformed into descriptions of people, places, events which are placed in the kaleidoscope of a particular work of fiction, shaken up, & emerge forming a different pattern. I probably would have said the same about UNDER MY SKIN, except I haven't read the CHILDREN OF VIOLENCE series yet, which corresponds with the period covered by Volume I of the autobiography. In Volume II, one sees many ingedients that went into THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK.

2. Lessing's observations of the period 1949-1962 in London, & comments on "the States" as she calls us.

It is funny in places, too. I think there's more humor in both volumes of Lessing's autobiography than in anything else I've read by her, and I wonder why this is.

Liked it, didn't love it.
I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as Volume I, UNDER MY SKIN. But it's a fascinating book for 2 reasons.

1. The light it sheds on the relationship between fiction & autobiography, & the glimpse it gives of the novelist's mind, how experience is tranformed into descriptions of people, places, events which are placed in the kaleidoscope of a particular work of fiction, shaken up, & emerge forming a different pattern. I probably would have said the same about UNDER MY SKIN, except I haven't read the CHILDREN OF VIOLENCE series yet, which corresponds with the period covered by Volume I of the autobiography. In Volume II, one sees many ingedients that went into THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK.

2. Lessing's observations of the period 1949-1962 in London, & comments on "the States" as she calls us.

It is funny in places, too. I think there's more humor in both volumes of Lessing's autobiography than in anything else I've read by her, and I wonder why this is.

wonderful reading - insightful and fun
Cold? No way.

Although volume 2 lacks the profound personalrevelations found in volume 1, it is a fascinating collection of hermemories and point of view of England in the 1950's.She talks quite a bitabout her life in a brutally honest way that few writers, let alone peoplein general, would be willing to admit.

Her witty observations of societyand what makes it tick are very entertaining, as well as many insights intowhat later became The Golden Notebook.

Cold & self-serving?Not thisbook.It's an oustanding autobiography by one of the most brilliant mindsof our time. I think negative reviewers of this book have gotten carriedaway with their own agenda.Doris Lessing never caters to expectationwhich makes her writing even more compelling. ... Read more

Product Description

Doris Lessing's love affair with cats began at a young age, when she became intrigued with the semiferal creatures on the African farm where she grew up. Her fascination with the handsome, domesticated creatures that have shared her flats and her life in London remained undiminished, and grew into real love with the awkwardly lovable El Magnifico, the last cat to share her home.

Customer Reviews (2)

Remember it is Doris Lessing on cats
My prior experience with Doris Lessing was "Descent Into Hell", so I wasn't expecting a fluff piece on the cuteness of cats when I picked up this book, but that said I do agree with another reviewer (K. Bell) that the number of kitten killings was a bit over the top. I certainly understand life and death are inseparable and do not wish the grimmer realities of owning cats to be tucked behind cute aphorisms; one of the things I enjoyed about this book was that she deftly described many aspects and periods of cat life. However, a little birth control goes a long way, and it was never adequately explained why she was so willing to choose offing the kittens rather than fixing the cats. She seemed to think they were less fully cats or something...I suppose I'm not a complete human either then since I'm on the pill ;)
Still, the writing is fantastic, and it's probably worth a read if you enjoy musing on cat behaviours.

"On Cats" lesson in irresponsibility and brutality
I got this book as a gift, and being a cat lover was thrilled with the title thinking it would be a lovely book about cats. It's not, it's about the author's own experiences with cats - mostly feral and semi-wild cats that she allows to breed several times a year, and when she gets too many kittens she takes it upon herself to kill them - and "kill" is the word she uses. In one gruesome episode (pg. 17) the over-population of their farm cats is rounded up into a room and shot to death. She (the author) makes a point of stating how awful it makes her feel, but throughout the book she does the same thing over and over again. In one chapter, she mentions that she should get her cat spayed, but then inexplicably she allows it to breed again and again and again. This cat, has a litter of six - which she feels is too many for the mother cat so she takes it upon herself to "kill four of them" and bury them out in some field. This killing of cats is mentioned so many times in the book it makes me wonder if the author is some sort of creep. I would not recommend this book to those readers who find killing of cats offensive: which is 99 percent of the population. ... Read more

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In these twenty-four provocative interviews, Doris Lessing talks frankly to a variety of interviewers--among them Joyce Carol Oates and Studs Terkel--about a wide range of subjects that concern her deeply. We hear about her early years in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), her involvement in Marxist politics, her views on feminism and "space fiction," and her own work, especially The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist. Included is a recent talk on the failure of Communism. These interviews, informed by Lessing's unfailing intelligence and refreshing directness, present an invaluable and up-to-date view of the mind and art of a distinguished contemporary writer. ... Read more

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First published by Michael Joseph in 1984, under a pseudonym, as 'The Diary of a Good Neighbour' and 'If the Old Could!', now published as 'The Diaries of Jane Somers', this is in many ways classic Lessing.As resonant with social and political themes as 'The Golden Notebook', Lessing returns to the realism of her early fiction with the wisdom and experience of maturity.The diaries introduce us to Jane, an intelligent and beautiful magazine editor concerned with success, clothes and comfort. But her real inadequacy is highlighted when first her husband, then her mother, die from cancer and Jane feels strangely removed. In an attempt to fill this void, she befriends ninety-something Maudie, whose poverty and squalor contrast so radically with the glamour and luxury of the magazine world. The two gradually come to depend on each other -- Maudie delighting Jane with tales of London in the 1920s and Jane trying to care for the rapidly deteriorating old woman.'The Diary of Jane Somers' contrasts the helplessness of the elderly with that of the young as Jane is forced to care for her nineteen-year-old drop-out niece Kate who is struggling with an emotional breakdown.Jane realises that she understands young people as little as she so recently did the old. ... Read more

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the heroinr of this powerful, searching novel is a passionate and intelligent young woman whose ideals are totally at odds with the life she observes around her.The dughter of provincial parents, martha Quest has been raised in a small-minded town in Central Africa - a community where hypocrisy, intolerance, and mindless traditionalism prevail. The book, which traces Martha from adolescence through an ill-conceived marriage, depicts her abrasive relationshipwith her elders, her contemporaries, and society as a whole. (Back cover - read more). ... Read more

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Included are seminal stories like "To Room Nineteen", in which a woman reacts against the oppression of her banal marriage with dreadful results; "One off the Short List", which traces the surprising conclusion to a seduction gone awry; and "The Habit of Loving" in which a lonely older man who takes a vivacious young wife witnesses an unexpected reversal of intimacy. Here also are two classic novellas, "The Temptation of Jack Orkney" and "The Other Woman", exemplifying Lessing's impressive understanding of human psychology. Rich and various in mood and background - the settings range across England and France - these stories powerfully convey the uncompromising insight, intelligence and vision of one of the most ardently admired writers of our time. ... Read more

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A feminist landmark, The Golden Notebook tells the story of writer Anna Wulf and the crises she faces in her personal, political and professional life. Confounded by writer's block, the ferociously independent Wulf explores her situation in four notebooks, one for each of the strands in her life. The Golden Notebook is the one in which, struggling to retain her sanity, she brings these strands together.

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Cuatro relatos se sumergen en los vericuetos de la vejez. Desde la historia de dos ancianas que forman una familia ad hoc hasta el trance de una mujer humilde que lucha por encontrarse a sí misma en una casa acomodada, pasando por las peripecias de la esposa de un dictador o por el sino del hijo bastardo de una mujer casada y un militar británico. Cuatro visiones tiernas pero crudas, reales pero fantásticas, sobre el inevitable proceso de senectud. / Nobel Prize of Literature 2007. A political allegory with futuristic touches; a Londoner social drama of race and class; a relationship in which the passion in war time becomes a shriveled obsession in the postwar period and a mortal trap in the bosom of two families erotically entwined. The New York Times. ... Read more

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Harriet and David want the same things: a family and a happy home. They marry, and at first all is idyllic, but with the fifth pregnancy things begin to sour. After a difficult birth, he develops faster and grows bigger than ordinary infants; he is unloving and disliked by his siblings. Harriet finds herself faced with a dark sub-continent of human nature, unable to cope. Lessing has written an ominously tangible novel, a powerfully simple contemporary horror story that makes for compulsive reading.

Description in Spanish:Harriet y David estan enamorados, deciden casarse y formar un hogar en donde poder criar felices a sus hijos. Despues de los cuatro primeros ninos, la llegada del quinto parece prometer aun mas dicha a la pareja. Sin embargo, el bebe se empieza a mover en las entranas de Harriet demasiado pronto y con demasiada violencia. Harriet da a luz en un dificil parto y eso no es mas que el comienzo: el nino se desarrolla de forma inusual y se convierte en un extrano para sus hermanos... Un inquietante retrato de familia que habla crudamente de la naturaleza humana. ... Read more