Alfred and Emily
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Alfred and Emily
| Alfred and Emily | |
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| Author(s) | Doris Lessing |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Fourth Estate |
| Publication date | 2008 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| ISBN | 0-00-723345-0 |
Alfred and Emily is a 2008 part fiction, part memoir book by British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing (b. 1919).[1] The story is structured in two parts and is based on the lives of Lessing's parents. The first is a novella, a fictional portrait of how her parents lives would have been without the interruption of the First World War. The second part is a retelling of how her parents lives really were.
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Contents
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Plot synopsis
The novella begins in England in 1902 where Alfred and Emily meet at a cricket match. However as the novel progresses to 1916, the pair do not marry as in real life. Instead they flourish separately, Alfred becomes a farmer and shares a happy marriage with Betsy. The absence of the war in this fictional portrait means Alfred is spared his crippling war wounds. Elsewhere Emily is spared her real-life role as nurse where she endured the agony of nursing desperately ill soldiers without the aid of morphine. Emily marries a doctor, but he soon dies and she is left a childless and wealthy widow. She channels her financial resources into philanthropic projects such as establishing schools for the poor.
The memoir transports Alfred and Emily to married life where they are farming unhappily in Southern Rhodesia. The unhappiness of her parent's lives is explained by a series of Lessing's own childhood episodes.[2]
Reception
The Guardian described the book as "perfectly crafted" and a "quietly extraordinary meditation on family".[3] The New York Times praised the book "In its generosity of spirit, its shaped and contained fury, “Alfred and Emily” is also an extraordinary, unconventional addition to Lessing’s autobiography."[4] The Washington Post applauded the structure; "allowing her readers this insight into the connection between autobiography and fiction, between form and content, she reaffirms fiction's powers and possibilities."[5] In an interview with TIME published shortly before the book's release, Lessing revealed that Alfred and Emily was her final book.[6]
See also
References
- ^ "Doris Lessing: Biobibliographical Notes". NobelPrize.org. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/bio-bibl.html. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
- ^ Alfred and Emily, by Doris Lessing, Twenty Chickens for a Saddle, by Robyn Scott. The Independent. 16 May 2008
- ^ A family at war. The Guardian. 11 May 2008
- ^ They May Not Mean to, but They Do. The New York Times. 10 August 2008
- ^ A Separate Peace. The Washington Post. 3 August 2008
- ^ Doris Lessing Q and A.. TIME. 11 July 2008
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