Customer Reviews

The Good Terrorist

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We'd do well to read, or re-read, this literary masterpiece by Doris Lessing which dissects for us the common-place, undramatic way in which many people in our Western society can get involved with terrorism. At the same time, the novel is a criticsm, full of irony and subtlety, of the hypocrisy and lack of values of western middle classes . In my opinion, this novel is far more scary than reading a black and white view of society, something Doris Lessing certainly never does here, since it is the blurry quality of grey what makes us confused when we have to judge.

Alice Mellings, the main charater of this novel, has all the qualifications for being the perfect middle-class home-maker: she cleans, decorates, cooks, and in general takes care of housekeeping and looks after her people. In the first of the great ironies of the book, though, Alice is not a middle-class housewife, but someone who "rebelled" against her middle class family in her youth by becoming a squatter, and is still trying to determine just the exact meaning of that. The people Alice looks after in such a motherly way are a group of squatters, mainly people who have abhorred their middle-class roots and have failed to find their place in the London society of the day. The house Alice tries to make into a nice, cozy home for all of them is an old, abandoned house where they are illegally living.

From the point of view of the protagonist, Alice, we follow the dozens of small problems and mishaps she has to overcome in order to reach her goal of creating a comfortable home for "her people". We follow her when she goes to her despised middle-class mother's house and steals money (an important source of income) or she speaks with the city council authorities to have electricity or water at home. We see these home-making activities are all-important in her aimless life, while she pays little attention to politics as they are discussed by the people who live with her.

These people vow to make revolution against capitalism (most of them, but especially the most rabid of these characters -I won't say more or it would be a spoiler- come from well-off families) and eventually begin to talk of aiding the IRA in their terrorist actions in London (the novel was written in the eighties...). Again, ironically, we know nothing of Alice's political opininos. In fact, she doesn't seem to be interested in politics at all. She is just "Anti-system", without knowing very well what it means, but, anyhow, her comrades seem to be very sure about it so she goes along with them....And thus, though passively, Alice is finally involved in the terror these people create in London.

What is masterly in this novel is the concept that terrorism, although obviously a political weapon, must rely in the actions of persons. That these persons, involved in terrorist actions, are certainly not good citizens or exemplary members of society, but usually psychollogical misfits who, once having found the explanation for their particular grudge and the easy justification for violence that extremist ideologies provide , are impossible to control.

But the best concept in the novel is that it shows how what we consider the best elements in our society (from the very home-making impulses of the protagonist to the idealization of youthful rebelliousness, to the "democratic" way in which the squatters' home is ruled, to the altruistic ideals the squatters seem to share...)are ironically being handled in a context and situation far from what we would consider idealistic. And we see how these very western concepts can ultimately be used against our society when they are not backed by human values. When abstract words such as "system" "capitalism" "socialism" "class struggle" "revolution" and many others (that, in the case of these novel, the characters manipulate without knowing very well what they mean), are seen as more important than the single, objective concept "human being", our best values are lost. Our society is creating monsters. And no matter how much we repeat that the threat of terror comes from outside. Ideas might come from outside, and that cannot be stopped....but the terror is inside. Doris Lessing helps to make us aware of this.

I read this book while travelling. It shows a simple girl, and then, like an onion, strips away layer after layer of her personality, finally exposing her in the last few scenes. For exploration of character, this is one of the finest books I've ever read. However, IMHO, Doris Lessing has a problem with plot, and that's evident in this book as well. It isn't resolved, it just ends.

Reading Lessing is like picking up the phone and hearing the voice of an old friend. Leave it to her, no foreigner to the left- to be the first to reveal the pathology inherent in those who make a political cause out of their own alienation. This is a brave statement and today, not so startling a tale- given the Symbionese trial and Ira Einhorn's conviction- Lessing drew it for us before it unraveled and as always, drew it with a care for the details of personality in social estrangement.

Lessing's story of unfinished growth and the contaminations of naivete and thrill have laid the passage to what now, we in the West have come to fear as no longer distant- terror, youth gone out of control and powerlessness.

I enjoy the writing style of Doris Lessing. I love the constrasting characters that help create a very absorbing story. The main character is Alice who carries a cast of misguided terrorist. Lessing is a wonderful writer in the way she does not need to wrap the story up in a nice package. I believe after reading one of her books you will be hooked like I am.

I purchased this book with it was new to the market for reasons I cannot recall. Maybe I felt it would be "worldly" to read something by a British author. I must have started it a half dozen times but finally went all the way through when a friend, another "reformed leftist," recommended it along with Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier" and others.

It's slow. If you're into adventure novels, you'll never finish it. But something--something indescribable--compelled me to keep reading.

(...)

I guess it's the painful detail of particularly Alice's self-reflection that makes the book slow and difficult and long to read. A portion of the text that rang a bell for me, however, was Alice's confrontation of her mother near the end of the book. Alice's drunk mother is sulking about all the sacrifices she's made for Alice--who's been living for years by stealing as much as she could from her parents and others while whining about their "middle class" values. What is obvious is that Alice is completely transparent to her mother, despite her inebriation! Here mom is swimming in her bottle of Scotch BECAUSE of all she's done for Alice who claims to reject her values. "Why don't you get a job? DO something for the first time in your life?" her mother pleads, then accuses Alice of being the caretaker/housewife, a role she she claims to deplore.

I don't want to give away the event that ends the book. Other critics are disappointed in the book's end, but I'm not. It's sort of a combination of the ending of Hitchcock's "Psycho" with that of John Sayles' "Limbo." There ARE items that the author could have spiced up the ending with, but they're not the point. The point is Alice, her pointlessness, her confusion as to her relationships with housemates and family, and with a society she ostensibly rejects.

It's a fascinating story but, again, don't expect shoot-'em-up action.

Originally published in 1985, this masterpiece should be more broadly read since it makes a commentary about the motivations and activities of terrorists that are extremely relevant to our time. Doris Lessing does a outstanding job of dissecting the minds and strategies of a group of fringe terrorists who eventually operate beyond their realm of expertise and competence. Lessing takes the view that it is a combination of political ideology as well as social networking and meeting ego needs that make up the budding terrorist. It is not only what they politically believe but it is also what their social network believes and which beliefs support their fragile self-concepts. Lessing draws together a group of terrorists and demonstrates the broad range of characters that would be motivated to commit terroristic acts. It is interesting that many of the characters are persons pushed to the fringes of society, such as a gay man, lesbians, a victim of childhood abuse, and an African immigrant. However there are also a few competent terrorists, intellectual and discrete, that move in and out of the narrative. In the middle of all this drama is a upper middle class radical woman who needs to be needed and thus becomes the mother hen to a nest of unappreciative vipers. Alice Mellings has 20/20 vision at identifying the hypocrisy of her parent's social class and among social service agents and policemen but she has much less ability to identify the hypocrisy in her angry pals in the terrorist squat. Alice is a fixer, a mommy character who tires to make everything alright for everyone - an odd personality type for a terrorist. Yet Alice has complete control as she manipulates civil servants into turning on the electricity or gas at the abandoned home she occupies with her coven of terrorists. She is not dumb, in fact far from it. Her interactions with a KGB agent toward the end of the book are perfectly in keeping with her insights, instincts, and manipulative ability. Yet Alice also becomes involved in a terroristic act that is far beyond the competency of she and her friends and the reader is never convinced that Alice has a realistic appraisal of the deep trouble in which she has landed.

There is much in this novel around class struggle, rebellion, psychology, and sociological concepts around group membership. The book is excellent in that it does not go into any depth around the philosophical roots of anarchism, socialism, and communism but demonstrates the concepts through the lives of those who profess these philosophies. Characters who profess communistic ideals live off of others in the group, not sharing labor, and selfishly hoarding resources for themselves.

The book makes the excellent point that real anarchists, IRA agents, KGB agents, and labor organizers are very weary of these lose end terrorists who lack discretion, insight, rigor of thought, emotional stability, and competency. Yet Lessing clearly reveals that incompetent terrorists are still extremely dangerous. Undisciplined terrorists are of little use to strategic social and political movements. This is a brilliant novel and it is highly relevant to this current time.

Occupy movememt types of today will see themselves in a "mirror" in this psychological study of leftist egoists all grouped under one roof. A masterpiece of character analysys of the radical left.

Alice and her boyfriend Jasper join a squat of left wing activists intent on overthrowing the establishment and forging links with the IRA and Soviet communists.
This is a wonderfully observed and paced novel. Alice is the 36 year old daughter of a well to do middle class family who has never held a job and is constantly seething about the wrongs of society. She constantly deludes herself-Jasper is homosexual but she sticks with him despite his obvious dislike and dependancy on her; she works to create a home with human comforts in the squat,she uses her parents for money;her and her fellow revolutionaries (all middle class) just aereate absract ideologies ,too self righteous and angry with their own lives to think out any consequences of what they do or stand for.
Lessing observes group dynamics perfectly. Some of the squat do all the work,others laze about, others dominate with their views-a society like any other no matter what the hot air rhetoric is!
This book perhaps has more meaning now than when it was written (1985) as communism has since collapsed and today only the seriously deluded attach much credability to Marxism. Perhaps the 'islamic' extremism is todays outlet for the left rather than Marx-in the UK its painful to see some left wingers supporting extreme right wing racists on the islamic platform for God alone knows what reasons (Lessing would enjoy the contradictions/hypocricy of these new age 'revolutionaries' no doubt!)There's always got to be some cause to enable what Roth called 'the perpetual protest'!
A great book which I thorughly enjoyed.

As I post this review, I have read six of Lessing's novels from different time periods in her career. This is one of her later works and it contains only some of the feminine perspectives, dialogues, analysis, and commentary that is associated with Lessing - but not all and toned down drastically from other novels. It is an interesting novel about a 35 year old woman who is a terrorist and a home-maker of sorts. Because of this home-maker twist, she is called "the good terrorist." But, she is a terrorist.

Doris Lessing (1919 - ) is the 2007 Nobel Prize winner in literature. She has a score of novels and many other works. Her complex novel The Golden Notebook (1957), her first novel The Grass is Singing (1950), and The Summer Before The Dark (1973) are considered to be her representative works. I read those three.

The present novel is good. It is not complicated in the fashion of The Golden Notebook. It is closer to being a conventional novel. It has a good set of characters and an interesting plot. Without giving away the plot, Lessing describes the personality of the female protagonist living in Britain who is university educated, but has never worked. She has an uncaring boyfriend. They are squatters taking over abandoned houses. In many ways this is a parody of serious terrorists; but, the book is not all humor.

I liked the book and would recommend it. It is a short quick read that takes two evenings to read. It does not contain the feminine arguments found in some of her longer works, but the present work is far easier read than The Golden Notebok (far, far easier) and it is a well written novel. If I had to pick one book that is easy to read and contains her arguments, this is not a bad choice, but The Grass is Singing is a more innovative work and also easy to read.

Lessing shows us the inside of a group of wanna-be radicals. In a very plain and everyday way, the main character (Alice) shows us how acts of brutality and inhumanity often come from idiocy. This book really makes you think about the dangers of any course of thought taken on for the wrong reasons.