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Doris Lessing
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Grass Is Singing: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Doris Lessing (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 1,583 ratings
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"There is passion here, a piercing accuracy, a rare sensitivity and power. . . . One can only marvel." — New York Times

Set in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggle against a ruthless fate.

Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm works its slow poison. Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of Moses, an enigmatic black servant. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses—master and slave—are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion, until their psychic tension explodes with devastating consequences.

Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0061673740
  2. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  3. Publisher
    Harper Perennial
  4. Publication date
    May 7, 2013
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    2911 KB
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“There is passion here, a piercing accuracy a rare sensitivity and power. . . . One can only marvel.” — New York Times

"Emotional unity and force ... one of her best works." — New York Review of Books

"Her impressive first novel is told with all the intensity and passion Miss Lessing compacts into all her work." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"An extremely mature psychological study. [The Grass Is Singing] is full of touches of truth seldom mentioned but instantly recognized. By any standards, this, book shows remarkable powers and imagination." — New Statesman

From the Back Cover

Set in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggleagainst a ruthless fate.

Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm works its slow poison. Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of Moses, an enigmatic, virile black servant. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses—master and slave—are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion, until their psychic tension explodes with devastating consequences.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00C4TK31G
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial (May 7, 2013)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 7, 2013
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2911 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 260 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 1,583 ratings

About the author

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Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing

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Doris May Lessing CH (née Tayler; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).

Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Elke Wetzig (elya) (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
1,583 global ratings
Good story ruined by terrible kindle version.
1 Star
Good story ruined by terrible kindle version.
This digital version is FILLED with errors!! What a waste. Good story killed. Almost every page a hyphen in the middle of a word or just a mistranslation when converted. See example. Should be "Plant mealies on every acre..." I would love a fixed version.
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Top reviews from the United States

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars The Grass is Singing
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2019
Verified Purchase
Ms Messing is an excellent storyteller! I thoroughly enjoyed Grass is Singing.

Mostly, I dislike books that start with the ending and this was no different. The cliffhanger method seldom catches me and this one was so uninteresting I almost didn't continue. But, I am glad I did.

It's not often that I can say that I did not like any of the characters but I loved the book. Mary is controlled by childhood issues she doesn't even know she has. She makes decisions based on what she thinks other people think and is not able to be her own person. Dick is more pathetic than Mary. He is so stubborn and full of pride.
The story is well written, grammatically correct, and easy to follow once you get past the cliffhanger business..
8 people found this helpful
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Ms Jared
4.0 out of 5 stars Like rubbernecking a train wreck
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2014
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I really liked this one. It was really interesting and the two main characters, Mary in particular, were so well written and so well developed I could actually picture them and their mannerisms as if they were people I really knew. I found myself really caring about them and hoping for a different outcome although I knew the ending already

Although tragic and dark, Mary's story builds so slowly and incrementally and is so intricately and sensitively written that I vacillated between disgust, sympathy, pity, and horror throughout the whole thing. She's a very complex, multi-faceted, fascinating character, and one I won't soon forget.

This was my first by Lessing but it certainly won't be my last.
One person found this helpful
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Edwin Relf
3.0 out of 5 stars Stunning first novel
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2014
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Most certainly 3 stars possibly more. My hesitation is that the central character, Mary, who is so carefully and sympathetically drawn, is also sexless in a way that isn't sufficiently explained. To that extent I find her a little bit unbelievable. There is a very briefly mentioned instance of “that event” which might be to do with the sexual relations of her parents or it could be an allusion that her father’s sexuality impinged on her young teenage self in a physical way.

Perhaps Lessing, at the time of writing this book in the period just following the war thought that the psychological entrails of behaviour not useful to explore but rather that the situation in the time of the situation IS the focus. Or, it could be a point Lessing is making; that the sexuality of women is a plaything of men and that women do not have a sexual identity.

However, the novel is a story of the descent into madness of Mary and her sad and unanchored husband and their lonely relationship over fifteen years on their unsuccessful farm in the veldt. Their home – not much more than a shack - is small and hot and a statement of their poverty yet their sense of dignity as white people in of the period. The only other human contact on a daily basis is with the Africans who are the farm workers and house servants and yet the extent that there isn’t any shared humanity by the whites for the Africans is at the core of the book and the descent into insanity of the two white people. It is all achingly intransigent.
8 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of a Woman in Colonial Africa
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2015
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This novel can really rattle you. You know pretty much from the beginning that Mary Turner, the novel's heroine, who has been found dead at the opening of the story, was doomed. Then you gradually collect understanding of why and how she was doomed when you start reading about her frivolous party years in a town somewhere in South Africa. Mary is quite content partying with and befriending men but not marrying them. She slowly turns into a figure of ridicule when he friends marry and she turns into an old maid. Finally a suitor presents himself: a farmer who is not well-off but who is in awe of her even though her looks begin to fade and she still reads the same sentimental novellas as when she was a young girl.
When she follows him to his farm somewhere deep in Rhodesia their marriage is a disaster from the very beginning. How could it be otherwise: she, a conventional, prejudiced, colonial woman of average intelligence who is not used to working with her hands (she used to have a well-paid job as an office clerk). And her husband the farmer has some kind of ADHD or bipolar problem which causes him to start growing new crops and developing new experimental projects that he abandons before they can reap the results.
The story relentlessly follows the steep slope downwards, and everything is described with depressing, yet gorgeous precision. If you'd like to experience what Africa is like, the sounds, the sights, the smells of the bush, the animals and the people, you will feel them right here in the poetic, highly knowledgeable and emotional descriptions. There are several opportunities for things to develop and for Mary and Dick Turner to make a change in their pitiful lives, but due to the roles in which they themselves and their upbringing have cast them, they never succeed. Things get even worse when Mary is forced to keep a black male servant who frightens her. She has fired too many servants so her husband threatens her that she cannot get rid of this one. This guy however, Moses, is the victim of some slight of Mary's and he will be her eventual murderer. Moses completes the list of characters who are predictable in the way they act because they are locked in their historical (colonialist) and cultural framework. We are not surprised when Mary slowly becomes mad: Moses abuses and seduces her in a way that she can't resist although she wants and needs to. Our suspicion that Mary is the victim of childhood sexual abuse (by her father) is confirmed.
One word about the title of the novel: if you think the title is highly evocative, you will not be disappointed by many other descriptions, for instance of the dark threat of the bush or the mind-numbing, all-pervasive heat. Some passages are hard to read, yet they are profoundly moving and/or thought-provoking: such as why Dick and Mary don't have children, their sexual dysfunctionality, the relationship with Moses, and the shame of the shoddiness and dirt in Mary and Dick's household.
*** I had read this book as a 16-year-old, but didn't remember the story that well. But I did remember that I had gone to pieces reading it that time too.
4 people found this helpful
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Bruce T
2.0 out of 5 stars Slow and redundant
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2013
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If you like to read a boring, slow diary of a neurotic woman caught in a mentally morbid place, then this is the book for you. I think this author used every adjective in the dictionary to describe every fly and atom that makes up the fly each day of this woman's boring existence. How many times can she describe the little shack she lives in, especially the tin roof, the view and sounds from her front porch, and in her opinion, her worthless husband. This makes up the majority of the book. The ending is not a surprise as it is in the beginning of the book and she is not a likeable character, quite the opposite, and neither is her mousy husband. The slave who kills her is the only hero of the book but his life is so miserable that there is nothing in the book to say "life can be good if for only a moment". Sorry I have this thing about finishing a book. A waste of my time.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Susanne
5.0 out of 5 stars Genius!
Reviewed in Canada on October 19, 2021
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A brilliant storyteller!
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Noirita Das
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential read regarding racism.
Reviewed in India on January 11, 2021
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The Grass is Singing is my fourth Dorris Lessing book and I guess I'm many steps closer to read everything that she has ever written. I have never been so hooked and at the same time so appalled by a book before.
Mary Turner, is the main character around whom the story revolves. She has grown up in an environment where her father drank all day to forget his troubles whereas her mother blamed him for her troubles. Mary's mother was dependent on her and took refuge in confiding in her child about the troubles in her marriage. Maybe this was the reason why Mary was so phlegmatic about the whole idea of getting married and having a family. She got herself a good job and dressed up every evening and savoured the little joys of life. But one day, she over heard someone deeming her lifestyle as pathetic and lost herself. She longed for some companionship and married the first man who approached her. Dick Turner is a simple man, too simple according to his wife, Mary. He believed in living very modestly and worked very hard in his farm. He cherished the little joys of farming and it was the fascinating growth of his crops that inspired him not the money he would make from it. Mary considered Dick a failure in the farm and a failure in life. His lack of wanting to indulge in luxuries exasperated her and she wanted to run away from him but felt like she was trapped in this hellhole for a life forever.

The racism and the general atmosphere of the story is really unsettling and even horrifying sometimes. Mary in order to escape from the mundanity of her marriage becomes dependent on her houseboy, Moses. She was unstable in every way possible and Moses tried to help her. She made Moses do every little thing for her but at the same time treated him like dirt. As time passed, Moses wanted to leave the Turners many times but he couldn't. Unable to take this indifference and cruelty any longer, Moses does something terrible and he would rather face the consequences of it than go back to his previous life as a houseboy. This book won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008 and if you are looking for books that'll show the true colors of racism, this is a must read for you.
One person found this helpful
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Heather
5.0 out of 5 stars A truly great read
Reviewed in Australia on February 20, 2024
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This is a story of two people in Rhodesia, it is a raw story about the spiralling down of their relationship.
It is anintense tail, aread that is hard to put down. Thoroughly recommended.
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Mimetta
5.0 out of 5 stars Une merveille
Reviewed in France on October 26, 2015
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Pour qui aime la littérature de qualité, la vraie! Tout en finesse, un style simple, très facile à lire, mais qui vous prend dans l' atmosphère qu' elle crée. Ambiance chaude et humide, qui fait perdre ses repères à l' héroïne. Ou comment un choix de vie qu' on pense justifié peut vous mener vers une inexorable auto destruction . Un couple qui n' en est pas un et un environnement auquel on ne peut s' adapter deviennent une prison qui vous enserre et mène à la folie passive. Un très grand texte, qui vous tient pendant longtemps après avoir terminé la lecture. Et puis, Doris Lessing a obtenu le prix Nobel de littérature en 2007....
4 people found this helpful
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Severgnini Francesca
1.0 out of 5 stars Mai ricevuto!
Reviewed in Italy on August 9, 2015
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Dopo due settimane dalla data indicata per la consegna e neanche l'ombra del corriere, vado su i miei ordini alla disperata ricerca di un numero di telefono da contattare...niente! Scrivo una mail al fornitore che fortunatamente mi risponde in tempi brevissimi. Mi spiega di controllare alla posta, di aspettare un nuovo invio ma, con un po' di insistenza, ottengo il rimborso. I soldi mi sono stati accreditati 2 giorni dopo...ammetto che sono stata contenta della disponibilità del servizio clienti del fornitore dell'articolo...ma non trovo molto corretto ritardare di tre settimane una consegna e non mandare una mail spiegando il motivo del ritardo!
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