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What if

September 28th, 2008 Lesley - Central

Doris Lessing’s first book since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 is really two stories in one. The first section of Alfred and Emily is an imaginary tale of her parent’s lives if the First World War had never occurred. In the imagined world of what if: Alfred Taylor and Emily McVeagh were both raised in a small English town. Doris’s father became a prosperous farmer while her mother, Emily, defied her father’s wishes and trained as a nurse in London. Alfred married a local girl and became the father of two boys while Emily entered into an unhappy marriage with a prominent London doctor.

The second part of the book may be familiar to readers of Lessing’s two volume autobiography Under My Skin and Walking in the Shade. It is a nonfiction account (with photographs) of her childhood in Southern Rhodesia ( now Zimbabwe) from the 1920’s through 1940’s. Alfred and Emily actually met during the war when he was a wounded soldier in a London hospital and she was his nurse. Both of them lived with the horror of those years for the rest of their lives. Alfred lost a leg in the war, suffered from post-traumatic stress and had a severe case of diabetes. Emily never really recovered from the countless horrors she saw while treating the wounded and as Doris says in her book: “My mother had no visible scars, no wounds, but she was as much a victim of the war as my poor father.”

Lessings observations throughout both stories include information on class conflicts, the role of women in society as well as the challenges of marriage and parenthood in England and Africa. If you haven’t read the author’s two volume autobiography or even if you have this creative re-telling will appeal.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction, Memoir & Biography