THE SUMMER BEFORE DARK

The Summer Before Dark by Doris Lessing - The cover looks promising, right? White letters on misty dark background, and a Nobel Prize Winner to boot. This book was written in 1973, and won a Nobel Prize for Literature. I have no idea why. Except there was a different sensibility about writing in those days...a more serious, bland way of writing with characters doing lots of ruminating. Books were often written in the third person, which somehow, coupled with the ruminations, rings false to me. In this book, a 45 year old English housewife gets a job when her family are all away for the summer. Then she has an affair with a 30 year old she meets in Turkey who gets sick in Spain after they sleep together once. Then I missed how she unloaded him, (he was really really sick, for weeks-whatever it was it was bad) but then she gets sick (really bad) and goes back to England where she rents (lets) a room in a house with a young woman who is rich and buys clothes and doesn't know who to marry or what she wants. The older woman gets better but sometimes goes out of the house looking old and haggle-y and sometimes goes out looking great. Actually that part I like a little bit because it's so true; there's that age where you can look fabulous for your age, or look 20 years older. Sometimes in the same day. As the English say in some of these ruminating books, "there's nothing for it, is there?" I also love but don't, that expression. It means nothing. Part of my bad attitude is that this was on the Book Club shelf at the library. When I first started writing book reviews, the Book Club shelf at our library had the most wonderful selection of new fiction. I'd read every one, and each was better than the last. It got to the point where I couldn't wait to see a new offering on that shelf. A few years ago, someone started adding non-fiction and ancient writings (such as this 1973 prize winner) to the book club shelves. One really has to be careful or one will bring home a dog like this. I'll end on that note. This is probably one of the worst reviews I've written! But, I suppose there's nothing for it.