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In the last years of his life, a contemplative Roman senator embarks on one last epic endeavor: to retell the history of human creation and reveal the little-known story of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic coastal wilderness. The Clefts have neither need nor knowledge of men; childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon, and they bear only female children. But with the unheralded birth of a strange new child — a boy — the harmony of their community is suddenly thrown into jeopardy.
In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women manage to live side by side in the world and how the troublesome particulars of gender affect every aspect of our existence.
Review:
"Doris Lessing is a legend. The author of nearly 50 books, she has earned her reputation as a notable prose stylist and a writer whose work defies categorization. Several of her novels are numbered among the modern classics; she has reputedly been considered for the Nobel Prize in literature. These facts only make 'The Cleft' more mystifying. Because it is not merely a flawed novel... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) or a failed novel. It is an actively bad novel. 'The Cleft' is a braided narrative, in which a Roman historian of Nero's time tells the story of an earlier, mythic period. Almost all narratives commence with a change; in this case, that inciting incident is the birth of a male baby into a species of parthenogenic, semi-aquatic women. The babe is presumed deformed and exposed upon a rock to die. But soon, more male infants follow (the males are referred to as 'Squirts,' the females 'Clefts,' for obvious reasons). After predictable phases of denial, anger, mutilation, murder and reconciliation, the human race as we know it is born. This seems a promising setup for an exploration of the founding of society, even for a sly satire. I found myself comparing this novel to Kurt Vonnegut's superior 'Galapagos,' to which it forms a sort of mirror-image, and hoping throughout that I was simply missing the point and that some justification would emerge 'Rashomon'-like from the narrative's fragments. Instead, 'The Cleft' delivered a moral message, an uncomplicated binary that reduces gender roles and relations to exactly the level of childishness implied by identifying most characters by the shape of their genitals. Lessing appears to have drawn her background from Elaine Morgan's notorious pseudoscientific tome, 'The Descent of Woman' (1972), which argues that human evolution was shaped by a seal-like return to the sea. Crackpot theories can make for great fiction, but in this case they have produced a novel as static and circular as the placid, bovine society that Lessing assigns to the Clefts. She portrays the denizens of her early matriarchy as Victorian caricatures: passive, incurious, interested in nothing except filling their wombs and maintaining the status quo — except for occasional bouts of bloodlust. The males, on the other hand, are curious, inventive, exploratory, irresponsible. Representatives of both sexes are equally thick, however. The exception is the Roman historian, a thoughtful older man married lovelessly to a younger woman. He could have been a finely drawn character, providing a needed counterpoint to the pseudo-history. But, alas, he too quickly descends to the level of parody. Additionally, the historical sections of the book are told in an unconvincing manner. I suspect they were meant to have an air of fable, as of antique retold tales too misty to be recalled accurately. Instead, they seem thick and meandering, a kind of narrative oatmeal, and the societies constructed are so naive that they too lack energy. The women in their coastal caves expose the first male babies, mutilate the next few, expose a few more. Eventually, inexplicably, eagles begin to carry the male infants to a nearby valley, where an equally inexplicable friendly doe raises them. For some reason, the females lose the ability to have babies without male assistance and begin making forays over the dividing mountain to get pregnant. There is a thematic and mystical cleft along the mountain pass, a volcanic vent of sorts, which seems intended to represent the female mysteries, the male attraction to and fear of them, and their eventual shattering as a result of random masculine violence. Unfortunately, since all of this occurs without emotional weight, it fails to provoke insight. Critic John Clute has said, tongue-in-cheek, that novels have a 'real year,' which is to say that no matter when a book purports to be set, there are always clues to when it's really set. And this novel is so firmly crystallized in post-WWII social roles of the Valium-housewife-and-unavailable-working-stiff variety that it feels more native to 1954 than to 2007. The last third or so focuses on two characters, one male and one female, who have inscrutably Celtic or Anglo-Saxon names — Maronna and Horsa — for this ostensibly Roman narrative. These two may in fact represent several persons, lines of descent wherein a series of leaders bear the same name. (This is another one of those places where something that should have been brilliant and a bit unnerving wound up feeling pointless.) These two, and their tribes, come into conflict over the sort of things that couples would fight over in a stereotypical 1950s sitcom: The woman thinks the man does not take care with the children, the man can't see what all the fuss is about. The men are shortsighted and careless; the women are able to predict disaster but curiously unable to do anything more useful than lie about on rocks and catch fish. In the end, these two great leaders come to an epiphany that boils down to 'we have nothing in common, but we need each other.' Which was not the poignant insight into human nature that this reader, at least, was hoping for. Elizabeth Bear is the author of 'Carnival' and other novels. " Reviewed by Elizabeth Bear., Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group) (hide most of this review)
Review:
"What an amazing book, bringing together as it does Lessing's radicalism, her feminism and her propensity for speculative fiction in a marvelous near-birthday gift from one of the great mothers of the contemporary novel." The Chicago Tribune
Review:
"[A]udacious....[A] mordantly entertaining fable rich in incident, discernment, and reflection." Booklist
Review:
"One of postcolonial fiction's brightest lights makes mythic the battle of the sexes....A dark parable, powerful yet baffling." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Lessing comes to no conclusions, but she does tell an interesting tale, one that is both cautionary and consistent with what we all know to be true — we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em." The Baltimore Sun
Review:
"Ponderous prose, excessive detail, muddled narrative, and a disturbingly graphic obsession with genitals are among the many failings of The Cleft." Providence Journal
Review:
"The Cleft is not an easy read....But the book's main fantasy provides so much grist for speculation and reflection that it keeps the reader entranced." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Synopsis:
From Doris Lessing, "one of the most important writers of the past hundred years" (Times of London), comes a brilliant, darkly provocative alternative history of humankind's beginnings.
Synopsis:
In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing envisions a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, jealousy, and petty rivalries — essentially, a society free from men. Lessing confronts the troublesome particulars of how gender affects every aspect of peoples existence.
Synopsis:
From Doris Lessing, "one of the most important writers of the past hundred years" (Times of London), comes a brilliant, darkly provocative alternative history of humankinds beginnings.
In the last years of his life, a Roman senator embarks on one final epic endeavor, a retelling of the history of human creation. The story he relates is the little-known saga of the Clefts, an ancient community of women with no knowledge of nor need for men. Childbirth was controlled through the cycles of the moon, and only female offspring were born—until the unanticipated event that jeopardized the harmony of their close-knit society: the strange, unheralded birth of a boy.
Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia, in 1919, and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the author of more than thirty books — novels, stories, reportage, poems, and plays. In 2007, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
"Review"
by The Chicago Tribune,
"What an amazing book, bringing together as it does Lessing's radicalism, her feminism and her propensity for speculative fiction in a marvelous near-birthday gift from one of the great mothers of the contemporary novel."
"Review"
by Booklist,
"[A]udacious....[A] mordantly entertaining fable rich in incident, discernment, and reflection."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"One of postcolonial fiction's brightest lights makes mythic the battle of the sexes....A dark parable, powerful yet baffling."
"Review"
by The Baltimore Sun,
"Lessing comes to no conclusions, but she does tell an interesting tale, one that is both cautionary and consistent with what we all know to be true — we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em."
"Review"
by Providence Journal,
"Ponderous prose, excessive detail, muddled narrative, and a disturbingly graphic obsession with genitals are among the many failings of The Cleft."
"Review"
by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
"The Cleft is not an easy read....But the book's main fantasy provides so much grist for speculation and reflection that it keeps the reader entranced."
"Synopsis"
by Harper Collins,
From Doris Lessing, "one of the most important writers of the past hundred years" (Times of London), comes a brilliant, darkly provocative alternative history of humankind's beginnings.
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing envisions a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, jealousy, and petty rivalries — essentially, a society free from men. Lessing confronts the troublesome particulars of how gender affects every aspect of peoples existence.
"Synopsis"
by Harper Collins,
From Doris Lessing, "one of the most important writers of the past hundred years" (Times of London), comes a brilliant, darkly provocative alternative history of humankinds beginnings.
In the last years of his life, a Roman senator embarks on one final epic endeavor, a retelling of the history of human creation. The story he relates is the little-known saga of the Clefts, an ancient community of women with no knowledge of nor need for men. Childbirth was controlled through the cycles of the moon, and only female offspring were born—until the unanticipated event that jeopardized the harmony of their close-knit society: the strange, unheralded birth of a boy.
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