The Grass Is Singing

In 1940s (?) Rhodesia, a white woman is killed my her houseboy. Is is not a murder mystery, but an exploration of how how things got to that point. How the woman came to be who she is, marry her husband, live in that house, have that servant. How the black man came to kill her. How the neighbours and police came to not investigate the matter, came not to be surprised or sorry. How the whites came to dehumanise the blacks in Rhodesia.

Mary, the main character, her husband and their relation are portrayed with nuance and sensitivity. I think we're meant to hate Mary, but really I felt like she had not really chance in the world she grew up. By comparison, the character of Moses (the houseboy), strikes me as a caricature of himself, and of all the most trite stereotypes. Probably the book also came across very differently when it was written and Rhodesia was under Apartheid. Not a 'pleasant' read, but one worth your time.

I chose The Grass Is Singing as my 1950s books for the Bookcrossing/Goodreads Decade Challenge. I don't think I've read any Doris Lessing before, certainly not recently, and was pleased to find that I love her writing style! This novel confronts several major issues within a relatively small number of pages yet never feels preachy and is an amazing achievement for a first publication. Our heroine, Mary, is a free-spirited young white city woman, earning her own wage and not subject to marital or family ties. She has overcome a poverty-stricken childhood, but her chance overhearing of acquaintances gossiping about her make Mary believe that her life is incomplete and would be better with the freedom of marriage. She ignores her own happiness in favour of the beliefs of others and pretty much jumps on the next man who doesn't get out the way quickly enough! Richard Turner is a poor white rural farmer described as living in isolation although he has black workers with whom he communicates every day, but those men and their families can not be suitable as friends and Richard also shuns the companionship of neighbouring white families. After their marriage, Mary joins Richard on his farm, initially happily as she goes to work improving the shack in which he lives. However, there is little money so this task is quickly completed and it is at this point that Lessing's story begins to draw in its claustrophobic threads. We know from the first chapter that Mary has died and Richard is mad, presumably with grief. Now we start to discover why. Perhaps Mary's terrible treatment of a succession of black houseboys, the result of institutionalised racism, has led to murder; perhaps she cannot stand the months and years of isolation; perhaps the sheer heat of living in essentially a tin box is to blame; perhaps Richard can no longer bear her criticism of his poor farming decisions which results in their downward-spiralling into ever deeper poverty. Each of Lessing's themes - racism, sexism, isolation, not belonging, poverty - are beautifully and powerfully portrayed. The Turner's predicament is completely believable and I pitied the couple intensely while at the same time being exasperated at them for being so unable to drag themselves away from their self-imposed prison. Even as hope is forced upon them towards the end of the book, we already know it will be too late and the poignancy of this is almost unbearable. The Grass Is Singing is a wonderful novel and, while I look forward to reading more of her work, I think this debut will have been very hard for her to beat.