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Doris Lessing's Mara and Dann. Oh My God what a book.

31 replies

Overmydeadbody · 20/05/2009 20:45

It blew me away.

Truly.

I don't think I've ever read such an amazing book. Not this year anyway!

What did you think?

If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Amazing.

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Overmydeadbody · 20/05/2009 20:58

Infin have you read Ben in the World? it's the sequel to the fifth child and is good, it helps give closure to the fifth child. I found that book quite upsetting.

She is just such an amazing writer.

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Overmydeadbody · 20/05/2009 20:54

Amazon Synopsis
The new novel from one of the greatest twentieth-century writers. Doris Lessing returns to the world of visionary fiction, last visited in her acclaimed 'Canopus in Argos' quintet of novels in the 1980s. It is sooner than you might think. And the earth's climate is much changed -- it's colder than ever before in the north, and unbearably dry and hot in the south. Mara, who is seven, and her four-year-old brother Dann find themselves somewhere very strange, not home...They are taken in by a kindly, grandmotherly woman, but this new life is hard: hunger, dirt, thirst and danger are the children's constant companions. Drought and fire carry off their adoptive home and force them to set off northward into the unknown, to experience a series of adventures that bring them through to an altogether altered world, where they can start to learn and build anew. Doris Lessing has written a compelling, troubling and entertaining novel that, through the remarkable odyssey of a brother and sister living in the imagined future, manages to tell us a great deal about the present we only dimly perceive and scarcely know how to value.

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infin · 20/05/2009 20:52

So long since I read Doris Lessing. The last one was the Fifth Child and that was NOT a comfortable read!
Will be off to look at the Amazon reviews for Mara and Dann. Thanks for the recommendation, she is a truly top flight author (IMO!)

Overmydeadbody · 20/05/2009 20:51

oh my God it is just an amazing epic story, completely unique and unpredictable.

About a brother and sister who go on an amazing journey through Africa, set about a thousand years in the future when life as we know it now no longer exists and humans are pretty much back in the stone age.

I cannot capture what the book conveys though, it's not really about the story, it's about humans, human relationships and interactions and growing up and stuff.

Just amazing though, Lessing has real Talent.

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AnyFucker · 20/05/2009 20:48

what is it about, I am looking for a good book

only seem to have read predictable shit recently (I give up after the 1st few pgs if it doesn't grip me)

LyraSilvertongue · 20/05/2009 20:47

What's it about? Describe it without giving too much away.

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