Stories [Paperback]

Doris Lessing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 12, 1980

This major collection contains all of Doris Lessing’s short fiction, other than the stories set in Africa, from the beginning of her career until now. Set in London, Paris, the south of France, the English countryside, these thirty-five stories reflect the themes that have always characterized Lessing’s work: the bedrock realities of marriage and other relationships between men and women; the crisis of the individual whose very psyche is threatened by a society unattuned to its own most dangerous qualities; the fate of women.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Doris Lessing’s artistry is demonstrated over and over in this generous collection.” –Time“Lessing is the great realist writer of our time.” –Diane Johnson, The New York Times Book Review“[Lessing’s] stock of reliable, solid information about life is enormous; her social range…impressively wide; her interests, human, varied, oddly reassuring.” –Margaret Drabble, Saturday Review

From the Inside Flap

All of Doris Lessing's short fiction other than the stories set in Africa.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (March 12, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394742494
• ISBN-13: 978-0394742496
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #722,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars some of the best short stories ever written, August 20, 2002

By 

JR (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stories (Paperback)

Whether describing an actress in love with an angry married man, the simple pleasures of a public park or the London Blitz, this collection of fine, moving pieces always rings true. Both heartbreaking and in places, disturbing, nonetheless, still rewarding reading. Lessing is more famous for the Golden Notebook, but these showcase her broad range and near flawless gift for making characters come to life. The story with the homeless old woman for example will stay with you forever.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, October 9, 2008

By 

Cosmoetica "cosmoeticadotcom" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stories (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) (Hardcover)

When I say that Doris Lessing is one of the top published fiction writers still living, you will know to a) take it to the bank, yet b) also go out and get a copy of her stories- preferably her 1980 collection from Vintage Books, simply called Stories, wherein thirty-five of her best tales are housed. Lessing, who was born Doris May Taylor, of British parents, in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919, and grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), is simply one of the best short story writers of the last century. Having recently read the overrated oeuvres of William Trevor and Frank O'Connor, it was a relief to avail myself of the comparatively low-keyed works of Lessing. Of course, she deals with many of the same topics that Trevor, especially (as far more of his tales than O'Connor's are set in England than Ireland), deals with: the bourgeoisie's sloth, the ins and outs of romance, yet she does so in far more daring and experimental forms, even as she does so. And her ear for the upper crust's patois is far more realistic and variegated than Trevor's. Consequently, her tales are more lively and engaging with the characters within. Another area she excels in is with the little details. She understands that `realism' consists not merely of a boring recitation of the diurnal, but a poetic focus on aspects of the real that have been overlooked by most people. Overall, I'd have liked a bit more diversity in her tales, but she has more than most writers, and this helps with the overall quality of her work. Not all her stories succeed, but her body of work is far more `experimental' than that of PoMo poseurs such as David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, or Rick Moody. Still, even as her stories stretch form, they all share a very clinical and calculating eye. Lessing really digs underneath the expected, in the best ways of such psychologically based writers as Richard Ford, while also exploring emotion in convincing character portraits that are reminiscent of the best of Russell Banks and Reynolds Price....The final sort of tales are the experiments, such as Not A Very Nice Story, which heavily plays with form and points of view as it details a pair of intertwined marriages, which ends on a very despairing note. This truly postmodern tale (as opposed to the slop that usually has that label applied to it) opens in this provocative and well written way:

This story is difficult to tell. Where to put the emphasis? Whose perspective to use? For to tell it from the point of view of the lovers (but that was certainly not their word for themselves- from the viewpoint, then, of the guilty couple) is as if a life were to be described through the eyes of some person who scarcely appeared in it; as if a cousin from Canada had visited, let's say, a farmer in Cornwall half a dozen unimportant times, and then wrote as if these meetings had been the history of the farm and the family. Or it is as if a stretch of years were to be understood in terms of the extra day in Leap Year.
Report On The Threatened City is Lessing's only science fiction tale in the collection, and has a very Twilight Zone like appeal. England Versus England and Two Potters are two minor, and mediocre tales that also fall into this last category. Through all her tales, though, Lessing never relents from the basic existential crisis that is at the heart of most literary stories of quality: who am I and how did I get here (to where the story starts)?, or its subtle variants She is very much a literary writer, in the best sense of that term, and, at least in her short fiction, I've found none of the specious and frequent comparisons made between her and Virginia Woolf to hold up. Woolf was a horrendous short fictionist (and her longer fiction was not much better, if at all), while Lessing is a premier talent and accomplished wordsmith. Her best tales read almost like emotionally charged psychological chess matches between antagonists, or a protagonist and the cosmos, and she has a good ear for real conversational tones, inflections, and offhanded poesy. She is a short story writer of a cut or three above even more acclaimed landsmen like William Trevor, yet has never quite gotten her due. Read her anyway, and help reverse the tide of deliteracy wrought by the vandals of literature: the bad writers, agents, editors, publishers, and critics, who try to snow you from what your gut tells you, but you just cannot finger. Doris Lessing is a terrific writer- stick that in your Cliffs Notes, and think about it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Subtle observations, February 2, 2009

By 

Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Stories (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) (Hardcover)

It is difficult to review a collection of 35 disparate stories, ranging from a few pages to short novellas of up to some 70 pages and covering a multitude of subjects and many different social settings. Except for one or two which are in surrealistic form, they almost all make compelling reading. There is an introduction by Margaret Drabble which traces some of the main themes and the influences on Doris Lessing, and I can only follow her example in my own way.

Many of the stories deal with the complicated and often tormented relationships between men and women (recalling the battle of the sexes, as also seen in The Golden Notebooks) and with what they expect of each other, but do not get. The poignancy when, as in three of the stories, the (middle class) people involved are `in a good marriage', `sensible', `rational', and self-analytical. Several times the note is struck that for a woman the all-absorbing task of running a home for husband and children is a kind of slavery. Hardly any of the stories are happy; many, indeed, are tragic. The most haunting of them work towards an almost unbearably inevitable end. Doris Lessing is always compassionate, and occasionally funny, too. Some stories are about lonely people - some of whom are unhappy in their loneliness, while others - women - see it as a sign of their proud independence.

The setting is often recognizably and evocatively in the decade or so after the end of the Second World War, mostly in London; but in some of them English people (with the restricted travel allowance of the post-war years, which create their own problems and tensions) are shown on holidays abroad. Some stories have a strong social or political background. The last and longest one, in particular, is, among many other things, a sad and complex meditation of an elderly socialist about the nature of protest movements, perennially repeating itself in each generation, and perennially creating a gulf between the generations.

Three pieces in this collection are not really stories at all, but observantly descriptive pieces about London's Regent's Park.

All, so the introduction tells us, were originally published between 1957 and 1972, but we are not given the date of each story's first publication.

It is a handsome edition and a pleasure to handle.