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Lessing has always created plausible characters, and those in Memoirs are no exception. Except for Hugo, the semi-anthropomorphic half-dog, half-cat mutation, they are realistic in spite of their bizarre behavior. In order to get past the first page of any fantasy one must suspend disbelief and as...

Author: By Gay Seidman, | Title: Children of the Holocaust | 7/15/1975 | See Source »

The Memoirs of a Survivor is not so much a novel as a fable. Obviously our own world is not so badly disintegrated few of us fear that our pets or those we love will be made into someone else's dinner. But Aesop's fables make sense to us...

Author: By Gay Seidman, | Title: Children of the Holocaust | 7/15/1975 | See Source »

Clearly this moral marks a change in Lessing's perception of the world, or at least in the way she deals with it. In her earlier works, she has been caught up in the struggles of the main characters. Their growth has been partially obscured by the author's own...

Author: By Gay Seidman, | Title: Children of the Holocaust | 7/15/1975 | See Source »

And feminists who look to Lessing as a prophet of the movement may be disappointed with Memoirs. Emily's struggle is to become a woman, yes, but the message of the book has nothing to do with a woman's struggle to become independent. In fact, midway through the book...

Author: By Gay Seidman, | Title: Children of the Holocaust | 7/15/1975 | See Source »

Yet it is Emily's love which, in the end, holds them all together--her ability to nurture rather than Gerald's ability to organize. Lessing's first major character Martha Quest, whom she followed through a series of five novels (the Children of Violence series), had no such ability...

Author: By Gay Seidman, | Title: Children of the Holocaust | 7/15/1975 | See Source »

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