raulbime's review against another edition
4.0
“In my opinion the truth is intolerable, it is more than we can stand, it has to be prettied up.”
This is the first of the [b:The Diaries of Jane Somers: The Diary of a Good Neighbor and If The Old Could|328371|The Diaries of Jane Somers The Diary of a Good Neighbor and If The Old Could|Doris Lessing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1173793609l/328371._SY75_.jpg|1118822] books that Lessing wrote under a pseudonym. [a:Doris Lessing|7728|Doris Lessing|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1457477725p2/7728.jpg] had been writing for three decades by the time she decided to hide her identity as the author of the book. She said that with the popularity of television in the 1980s, writers had to become personalities and appear for interviews on television, making it difficult for new previously unpublished writers and making writing about more than the book. It's for an almost similar reason that [a:Elena Ferrante|44085|Elena Ferrante|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png] hides her personality as she believes that once a book is completed it can do without her.
This background is important as it determined the style of this book. Lessing was afraid that people would catch on to this experiment, and so she took the identity of a middle-class centrist/conservative journalist, but other than a translator and an editor, no one had a clue. The book was treated with patronising reviews and forgotten after sometime, so in a way it was successful as an experiment.
Now to the story. Jane Somers, nicknamed Janna, is the protagonist of this book. She's middle-aged, middle-class, self-sufficient, successful and works for a woman's magazine named Lilith. Like most people Janna prefers not to deal with the ugly and inconvenient and so when her mother and husband both (but at different times) fall ill and die, she shields herself emotionally and later regrets that she didn't do enough for them. Then she meets Maudie Fowler, a lonely ninety year old poor woman, and starts a friendship with her.
Illness, loneliness, aging, death, are the core of the book. When Janna establishes a friendship with Maudie and starts to look after her, she also befriends two other old women in their nineties and certain things about growing old become clear to her. How the body begins to fail, how we put a distance between ourselves and the old because we're afraid and more.
This was a moving read that looks into how difficult it is to take care of people who need care and how important it is to care for old people and the sick in every way we possibly can. It's a shame it didn't receive enough attention as it ought to have, the last pages were among the most profound I've ever read about death.
This is the first of the [b:The Diaries of Jane Somers: The Diary of a Good Neighbor and If The Old Could|328371|The Diaries of Jane Somers The Diary of a Good Neighbor and If The Old Could|Doris Lessing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1173793609l/328371._SY75_.jpg|1118822] books that Lessing wrote under a pseudonym. [a:Doris Lessing|7728|Doris Lessing|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1457477725p2/7728.jpg] had been writing for three decades by the time she decided to hide her identity as the author of the book. She said that with the popularity of television in the 1980s, writers had to become personalities and appear for interviews on television, making it difficult for new previously unpublished writers and making writing about more than the book. It's for an almost similar reason that [a:Elena Ferrante|44085|Elena Ferrante|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png] hides her personality as she believes that once a book is completed it can do without her.
This background is important as it determined the style of this book. Lessing was afraid that people would catch on to this experiment, and so she took the identity of a middle-class centrist/conservative journalist, but other than a translator and an editor, no one had a clue. The book was treated with patronising reviews and forgotten after sometime, so in a way it was successful as an experiment.
Now to the story. Jane Somers, nicknamed Janna, is the protagonist of this book. She's middle-aged, middle-class, self-sufficient, successful and works for a woman's magazine named Lilith. Like most people Janna prefers not to deal with the ugly and inconvenient and so when her mother and husband both (but at different times) fall ill and die, she shields herself emotionally and later regrets that she didn't do enough for them. Then she meets Maudie Fowler, a lonely ninety year old poor woman, and starts a friendship with her.
Illness, loneliness, aging, death, are the core of the book. When Janna establishes a friendship with Maudie and starts to look after her, she also befriends two other old women in their nineties and certain things about growing old become clear to her. How the body begins to fail, how we put a distance between ourselves and the old because we're afraid and more.
This was a moving read that looks into how difficult it is to take care of people who need care and how important it is to care for old people and the sick in every way we possibly can. It's a shame it didn't receive enough attention as it ought to have, the last pages were among the most profound I've ever read about death.
sarahreadsaverylot's review against another edition
4.0
Diary writing as lens for heart-wrenching and heroic introspection. Poignant and elegant, but also mercilessly invasive. An inspiring read on so many levels.
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