Doris Lessing — The Sweetest Dream

Flamingo 2002 Paperback, 496pp. It's the morning of the sixties and it's suppertime at Freedom Hall, a household in North London. Frances Lennox stands at her stove, bringing another feast to readiness before ladling it out to the motley, youthful crew assembled around her hospitable table. Around them are ranged their schoolfriends and girlfriends and ex-friends and new friends fresh off the street. The feast begins. Everything is being changed and being challenged. And here in this kitchen, the nutritious tolerance can be sniffed. Over there in the corner is Frances' ex-husband, Comrade Johnny, who delivers his rousing tirades, then laps up the adolescent adulation while he laps up his soup, before disappearing into the night to evade the clutches of his responsibilities. Upstairs sits Johnny's exiled mother, funding all, but finding she can embrace only one lost little girl. And will the Africans tolerate? These are the people dreaming the Sixties into being and the people who on the morning after all that dreaming, woke to find they were the ones taxed with clearing up and making good. Cover creased, top of first page cut out. (ISBN: 9780006552307). Very Good.