Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Lessing, Doris (Vol. 170) - Stephanie Merritt (review date 1 October 2001)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Stephanie Merritt (review date 1 October 2001)

SOURCE: Merritt, Stephanie. Review of The Sweetest Dream, by Doris Lessing. New Statesman 130, no. 4557 (1 October 2001): 83.

[In the following review, Merritt assesses The Sweetest Dream within the context of Lessing's later career.]

By prefacing this vast novel [The Sweetest Dream] with an authorial disclaimer, Doris Lessing creates expectations that she then attempts to wave aside. She has decided not to write the third volume of her autobiography to follow Walking in the Shade, she explains, but her readers should not imagine that this book is a fictional substitute. Though The Sweetest Dream clearly is, to a degree, retracing the terrain of Lessing's life from the 1960s onwards, in London and, later, in Africa, she is somewhat disingenuously asking her readers not to peer too closely at the characters for a likeness of real people, including...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Adele S. Newson (review date winter 1994)
   2. Julia O'Faolain (review date 5 April 1996)
   3. Ruth Brandon (review date 12 April 1996)
   4. Suzann Bick (review date fall 1996)
   5. Adele S. Newson (review date autumn 1996)
   6. Judith Grossman (review date October 1996)
   7. John Hobbs (review date 7 December 1996)
   8. Millicent Bell (review date summer 1997)
   9. Anthony Sampson (review date 31 October 1997)
   10. Jane Miller and Elaine Showalter (review date summer 1998)
   11. Elizabeth Powers (review date September 1998)
   12. Mara Kalnins (review date March 1999)
   13. Alex Clark (review date 2 April 1999)
   14. Judith E. Chettle (review date May 1999)
   15. Doris Lessing and Jonah Raskin (interview date June 1999)
   16. Mona Knapp (review date spring 2000)
   17. Miranda France (review date 24 June 2000)
   18. Trudy Bush (review date 13 December 2000)
   19. Susan Rowland (essay date 2000)
   20. Sarah Sceats (essay date 2000)
   21. Linda Simon (review date February 2001)
   22. Alan Davis (review date spring 2001)
   23. Philip Hensher (review date 1 September 2001)
   24. Stephanie Merritt (review date 1 October 2001)
   25. Jeff Zaleski (review date 21 January 2002)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright