‘Love, Again’
Finished the last page under the soft, gentle sunlight of a spring morning. Happened upon the book in a used bookstore in Los Angeles and was drawn in by the premise, a “silver-haired romance.” Picked it up almost casually and brought it home.
I suppose this is my third book by Doris Lessing. Like the previous two, the author seems to gather the people around her and stand them together before a rough and clouded mirror. The images overlap and blur, and at the center there is always the same woman, perhaps at different ages, in different guises, but the same intelligent, self-aware, dissatisfied, full of questions; And she always reads a lot and thinks a lot.
The reading experience was genuinely pleasurable, which is rather rare in literary fiction. In the book, Love encompasses much more than what we usually call erotic love, though it ultimately returns to the love between men and women, soaked with its weight, complexity, and pain. But Lessing’s prose is utterly beautiful, illuminating, witty, and quietly moving. Perhaps that is why, despite the length of her novels and the meticulous detail with which she renders life, I rarely feel tired of reading them.
Looking back at the notes I took while reading, there were many smiling moments, and a few teary ones, all with delightful understanding. On one sticky note I had written:
“I’d rather cry alone over a passage about the momentary understanding I received and achieved from another person who wrote this passage thirty-something years ago—for a moment she wrote about that I have lived, once, twice, many times.”
That page was about the troubled teenager Joyce. The protagonist “…sat silent in the car as it sped through moonlit lanes, thinking for the thousandth time that there must be something sensible they could do about Joyce.”
Maybe it was also a response to the comment I received when I told people what I was reading: “Are there any tears?”—asked in a teasing tone, as if a sage scholar (a man, of course) were condescending to a sentimental high-school girl about her reaction to a cheap nineteenth-century romance, the sort that Emma Bovary would devour ravenously.
Not really offended, just a little annoyed, and perhaps amused.
A friend once said that when dealing with men, one often has to “scale downward in compatibility.” The question is: when will men realize that we are doing this, and if they do realize it, will they be okay with it?
Take Hal in the novel, the protagonist’s brother. Through the narrator’s eyes, his immaturity, self-centeredness, and arrogance are rendered vividly. What is most interesting is that he remains oblivious to how his childishness and self-absorption make the life of people around them unbearable. Hal can even ask, quite innocently: What did I do? Everything was fine—why did she have to leave me?
It isn’t entirely unfunny. Sometimes it even reads as a little endearing. As long as one does not personally end up entangled with such a man—or bound by vows of lifelong loyalty—it remains relatively harmless.
The final part of the novel, however, felt excessive to me—too much attempted analysis and explanation, especially the scene involving the girl, her mother, and the baby boy. I don’t have brothers, but I am familiar with the feeling that someone else always considered more worthy of love. Yet, reading that part, I really wanted to say, enough, Doris, you’ve written enough about it.
Overall, I continue to appreciate silver-haired writers—especially women: Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, and Annie Ernaux. They shed light on the poorly documented final chapters of human consciousness. In a way, I feel closer to them than to my own blood relatives. They offer a preview, a glimpse—an open gate to the next landscape, one that, if I’m fortunate, may step into in about fifteen years.