The Sweetest Dream : A Novel
Author(s): Doris Lessing
“[Lessing] is a pro, writing at the top of her powers, realistically, passionately, accessibly…. a stirring novel”—San Francisco Chronicle
Frances Lennox stands at her stove, bringing another feast to readiness before ladling it out to the youthful crew assembled around her hospitable table—her two sons and their friends, girlfriends, ex-friends and new friends fresh off the street. It’s London in the 1960s and everything is being challenged and changed.
But what is being tolerated? Comrade Johnny delivers political tirades, then laps up the adolescent adulation before disappearing into the night to evade the clutches of his responsibilities. Johnny’s mother funds all but finds she can embrace only one lost little girl—Sylvia, who leaves for a South African village dying of AIDS.
These are the people dreaming the Sixties into being and who, on the morning after, woke to find they were the ones taxed with cleaning up and making good.
Review(s):
“[Lessing] is a pro, writing at the top of powers, realistically, passionately, accessibly…. a stirring novel.”
“Lessing’s sage, level gaze is everywhere bought to bear … [THE SWEETEST DREAM] is solidly wrought, deeply felt.”
“Irresistibly alluring … [THE SWEETEST DREAM is] one of Lessing’s most generous works.”
“Lessing renders the spirit of an age as few writers can.”
“Wonderfully ripe characters … grand-scale writing.”
“[Lessing’s] acute political and artistic awareness makes her vision of our time rich and almost always freshly perceptive.”
“A kind of a truth emerges … as Lessing effortlessly captures what is a quintessential in each of her charming characters.”
“One of out greatest novelists.”
“Lessing’s most engrossing novel in many years.”
“This book brings with it a rare literary pleasure - the kind you might have in suddenly coming upon a long lost novel by George Elliot or Balzac …The haunting brilliance of her characters whom one feels one knows better than one’s friends, the passion of her ideas and vision remain unblemished.”
ISBN: 9780060937553