Alfred and Emily (Hardcover)

by Doris Lessing (Author)
Key Phrases: Aunt Emily, Mary Lane, Miss Burton (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The 2007 Nobel Prize in literature was a bloody disaster for Lessing, she recently told the BBC. This curious work—half fiction, half memoir, hampered by slapdash prose and an unfocused organization—may be the result of that unsettling time, when she said she didn't have the energy to write a full novel. The opening novella (the longer of the two pieces) is what might have become of her parents, Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh, if they had never married. The sluggish account of their parallel lives is notable mainly for Lessing's commentary on the changing economic, social and cultural mores in England before and after WWI. The second section is a rambling series of recollections that describe the family's failed farm in Southern Rhodesia. Lessing describes her mother's dominating personality, attributing her mother's smothering attention to her frustration at having given up a successful wartime nursing career and a vital social life to raise a family. Lessing's longtime readers will find little new in her autobiographical disclosures, and new readers will look in vain for the talent that won the Nobel. 11 b&w photos. (Aug.) ""
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From Bookmarks Magazine
In Alfred & Emily, groundbreaking author Doris Lessing returns to the subject matter explored in her 1994 autobiography, Under My Skin. Fans will recognize common themes and details, but Lessing’s outlook and tone have softened. Critics were touched by her genuine attempt to understand her overbearing, self-absorbed mother, though her writing is still tinged with resentment. Lessing’s fictional novella is no fairy tale, but most critics found it unconvincing. Why invent a fictional life if it isn’t compelling? They much preferred the memoir: its somber tone and gritty details bring the unhappy couple wrenchingly and heartrendingly to life, its fractured, unconventional structure reminiscent of that of The Golden Notebook. While Lessing has penned a powerful and unsparing portrait of a marriage framed by the physical and psychological damages of war, a few critics suggest that general readers might do best to start with Under My Skin, The Golden Notebook, or another of Lessing’s novels.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper (August 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060834889
• ISBN-13: 978-0060834883
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #154,197 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Much less than I hoped for, September 26, 2008

By	armchairinterviews.com (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This is a somewhat unusual book. Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing chose to write about her parents, Alfred Taylor and Emily McVeigh, but rather than stick to their actual lives she took the liberty in the first half of the book to imagine them as they might have been had there never been a World War I. The second half of the book deals with them as they actually were.

Lessing imagines her parents as what they seemed to have wanted to be-a farmer and a head nurse-who never married each other. The farmer had a wife and family. The nurse married a doctor who was not a very loving individual and who died young. Alfred and Emily met each other, but never were a couple, in their daughter's imagination.

The imagined story is stilted and old-fashioned in style. Possibly because the main characters were people she knew well in other circumstances, Lessing doesn't do much with their development. While events occur, she doesn't really give any insight as to why the individuals behave as they do. Toward to end of the novella she finally gives them some life, but by then it is hard remain interested.

The second half of the book that tells about their real life is rather rambling and disjointed. Lessing is 87 years old and in the manner of many older people she seems to repeat herself fairly often while describing her parents' life.

The real Alfred Taylor wanted to be a farmer, but he went to "The Great War" and lost most of his right leg from shrapnel wound. He spent a very long time in the hospital recovering and that is where he met his wife, Emily McVeigh, a nurse. She was a wonderfully talented upper-middle-class woman who decided to defy her father's wishes and became a nurse. After the war they moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Alfred tried to farm, but nothing about the land was like the English farm of his dreams. Emily suffered from a nervous breakdown and Alfred was always suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

I suspect that readers who are very familiar with Doris Lessing and her other works might find this book enjoyable. I don't feel that it holds up well alone. Lessing seems to expect that the reader already knows a great deal about her life. That, coupled with the disjointed style, makes the book less than I had hoped for from a writer of her stature.

Armchair Interviews says: Heed this reviewer's comments.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the horrors of war, August 15, 2008

By	Doro - See all my reviews

I was not too pleased with the first fictional part of this book but when I read the second part I understood why Doris wrote the first part. What a hard life they all had in Zimbabwe once known as southern Rhodesia! But such a wonderful life: the story of the black bull calf touched my heart. and the food! and wasn't her father handsome? The boring life she invented for her parents living separate lives might not have been one they would have liked it at all. That is the puzzle of life. Love makes hardship worthwhile. But of course, war screws everyone but George Bush and his friends. Krupp was the Bush family of World War one. Does it matter? No. Doris' parents seemed to her to have been crushed by an early eqivalent of the Bush family. She couldn't wait to escape. And now she revisits her childhood and pities her parents even though she was aloof to her mother for ages.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Might Have Been, August 10, 2008

By	C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

At the age of 88, Ms. Lessing has created a hybrid biography of her parents. The first section is an alternate history of their lives where they do not marry and go on to happier, fulfilling lives. The second part is the reality of their unhappy marriage (and Ms. Lessing's unhappy childhod) and the negative impact that World War I had upon their lives with the many deaths they were exposed to. One has the sense that this book is a summing up and looking back on her life to where it all began.