The Memoirs of a Survivor [Paperback]

Doris Lessing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 1988

In a beleaguered city where rats and roving gangs terrorize the streets, where government has broken down and meaningless violence holds sway, a woman -- middle-aged and middle-class -- is brought a twelve-year-old girl and told that it is her responsibility to raise the child. This book, which the author has called "an attempt at autobiography," is that woman's journal -- a glimpse of a future only slightly more horrendous than our present, and of the forces that alone can save us from total destruction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of her profoundest visionary excursions." --Gail Godwin, Chicago Tribune Book World

"An extraordinary and compelling meditation about the enduring need for loyalty, love and responsibility." --Time

"A brilliant fable." --Maureen Howard, front page, The New York Times Book Review

"Doris Lessing again presents herself as one of the most intelligent of all modern novelists." --Philadelphia Bulletin

"The most fluid and suggestive of all her books." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A short, easily read novel...part science fiction and part 19th-century realism, its effect is profoundly affecting and mystical... especially moving for those who have responded to Lessing's previous work." --Houston Chronicle

"A major work, one that well proves her vigor, originality and importance as a novelist." --Cleveland Free Press

From the Inside Flap

In a beleaguered city where rats and roving gangs terrorize the streets, where government has broken down and meaningless violence holds sway, a woman -- middle-aged and middle-class -- is brought a twelve-year-old girl and told that it is her responsibility to raise the child. This book, which the author has called "an attempt at autobiography," is that woman's journal -- a glimpse of a future only slightly more horrendous than our present, and of the forces that alone can save us from total destruction.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (April 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394757599
• ISBN-13: 978-0394757599
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #255,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking near future scenario, December 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Memoirs of a Survivor (Paperback)

These "Memoirs" postulate a near future when society's framework and infrastructure are breaking down. Young people are forming gangs and moving out of the city, the trappings of civilization are no longer relevant, cannibalism is rumored. Priorities are back to food, shelter, and clothing. Personal safety and a bath cannot be taken for granted. The narrator is an older woman who lives on the ground floor of a large apartment building. A 12-year-old girl, Emily, is brought to her and she is told the girl is her responsibility. The woman does her best to protect Emily, who is growing up quickly, but the girl has a better grip on reality than her protector. Watching the action on the street from the windows, they see first the nomadic groups of young people moving through their area, then gangs forming from their own neighborhood and moving out. Emily falls in love with a young gang chieftain and joins his group, where she finds her responsibilities almost more than she can bear. Her abilities in the new order are great, but she often retreats to the older woman's apartment. As more people move out, life in the city changes. Gangs occupy and protect their territories, raise gardens and animals for food. And then a new kind of gang emerges - younger children who have no idea of organization, loyalty, or even much language. These feral children are vicious and cunning. The quandary is that they are "only children." Emily's chieftain tries to help them and comes to grief. There are many puzzling threads to the story which are never explained. Does the wall really open into another reality? Is the dog really a dog, or something more? I enjoyed that quality of ambiguity as an added dimension to the story. I recommend it highly.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A furturistic novel and spiritual teaching manual, January 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Memoirs of a Survivor (Paperback)

There are several levels to this book, and many obscure threads which are woven together to make a very satisfying, yet provocative and obtuse novel of survival in times of chaos as society falls apart. Some of the mysteries which are present in the story ( who really is Emily, who and/or what is the dog, what is the alternate reality behind the wall, and what are all the charactors doing at the end when the iron egg crumbles) are woven into other novels by Lessing, such as the "Four Gated City." "Memoirs of a Survivor" is reported to be partly autobiographical.

A movie was made in England of "Memoirs" staring Julie Christi around 1985 which was shown briefly in Venice, California. I have not seen it referred to anywhere since.

21 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a post-apocalyptic yawner, August 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Memoirs of a Survivor (Paperback)

Despite the author's accomplished prose style and vivid imagination, this is, in the end, a very boring book about a setting and a theme which should be fascinating: surviving the--or at least an--apocalypse. The problem is that the author remains at such an abstract and intellectual level throughout most of the book. As a result, you don't fully enter into the narrator's world, and you don't really get to know the characters. There is a scene about 30 pages from the end, when some peddlers come selling water in buckets, and there's a fight over the water, when I found myself saying, "Yes--this is exactly the kind of engaging detail that has been missing from most of this story!" The ambiguities of the cat-dog character and the wall-as-conduit-to-alternate-reality do not make up for this fundamental shortcoming.