Author(s): Lessing, Doris

Fiction

With the four short novels in this collection, Doris Lessing once again proves that she is unequalled in her ability to capture the truth of the human condition.

The title story, The Grandmothers, is an astonishing tour de force, a shockingly intimate portrait of an unconventional extended family and the lengths to which members will go to find happiness and love. Written with a cinematic eye, so that one almost feels one is watching the scenes from the sidelines, the story is a ruthless dissection of the veneer of middle-class morality and convention which manages to be at once universal and desperately, heartbreakingly personal.

Victoria and the Staveneys takes us through 20 years of the life of a young underprivileged black girl in London. A chance meeting introduces her to the world of the Staveneys