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    Alfred and Emily
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    Alfred and Emily
    Unavailable
    Alfred and Emily
    Ebook268 pages4 hours

    Alfred and Emily

    By Kristina McMorris

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 4, 2008
    ISBN9780007283200
    Unavailable
    Alfred and Emily
    Author

    Kristina McMorris

    Kristina McMorris is a New York Times, USA TODAY, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of two novellas and seven historical novels, including Sold on a Monday with over a million copies sold. The recipient of more than twenty national literary awards, she previously hosted weekly TV shows for Warner Bros. and an ABC affiliate, beginning at age nine with an Emmy Award-winning program, and owned a wedding-and-event-planning company until she far surpassed her limit of "Y.M.C.A." and chicken dances. She lives with her family in Oregon. Visit her online at kristinamcmorris.com; Instagram: @kristina.mcmorris; Twitter: @KrisMcmorris; and Facebook: @KristinaMcMorrisAuthor.

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    Reviews for Alfred and Emily

    3.5/5

    101 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is an unusual book in that Lessing is writing a biography of her parents but the first half is her fictional view of how her parents met and had a happy life together. The second portion is the reality of her father losing his leg in the trenches of WW I and of her mother never allowing her children to be free until they fled from her influence. Her father wished to be an English farmer even though he had no agricultural experience and he and his wife decide to move to Rhodesia after learning of a great opportunity to become rich farming maize there. Of course it was a scam and they never did make enough money to move back to England to purchase the English farm he dreamed of owning.We do learn a great deal about life in Rhodesia between the wars and after leading up to the black rebellion against Ian Smith and the white minority. That portion of volume was gripping.
    • 3/5
      II was an interesting story about her parents' life in Rhodesia. I felt the syntax was stilted and choppy throughout the book. Because of " ,choppiness" it was hard to focus on what she was trying to convey. Doris Lessing is a Pulitzer Prize winner. I know it's me, not her. I think I have been saturated with reading books maybe not up to par with her writing skills.. She wrote some excerpts which were food for thought (forgive the pun) on American restaurants throwing away good food, while there are starving people everywhere. She thought is was unforgivable. It is. Also food for thought were her excerpts about war being nothing more than profiteering. I didn't enjoy the first part about her parents imaginary life. She should have stuck with reality.
    • 2/5
      The premise and hybrid structure of Alfred and Emily is potentially quite intriguing. In one half of the book, celebrated author Doris Lessing produces a memoir of growing up on a small farm in Rhodesia during the years between the two world wars. The ostensible purpose of this narrative to tell the true stories of her parents, both of whom had been beaten down—physically, mentally, and emotionally—by myriad circumstances at that point in their lives. In the other half of the book, Lessing creates a fictional alternative story for Emily and Alfred in which the Great War does not rob them of their vitality and purpose. However, in this imagined tale, her parents are nothing more than life-long friends who are married to other people and who follow very different paths. So, the alternate vision the author produces is one in which she herself would not have existed!The problem I had with this literary exercise is that absolutely none of it was either interesting or engaging. The author made the curious decision to tell the fictional version of her parents’ story first, rather than letting the reader become familiar with the sad and frustrating reality of their true journey. There is a growing movement in modern literature to redeem an otherwise lamentable situation through fiction (e.g., Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin), but you really have to understand the original circumstances before an attempt at redemption makes sense. Thus, the author’s sequencing choice was a real misstep. More importantly, though, both versions of the saga are almost wholly devoid of warmth and the events described are unlikely to resonate with a reader not already acquainted with the family. By the end of the book, the overwhelming impression is that this was something the author needed to write for therapeutic reasons (particularly with respect to her considerable mother issues), but that did not make for a rewarding reading experience.
    • 2/5
      "That war, the Great War, the war that would end all war, squatted over my childhood. The trenches ere as present to me as anything I actually saw around me. And here I still am, trying to get our from under the monstrous legacy, trying to get free."If I could meet Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh now, as I have written them, as they might have been had the Great War not happened, I hope they would approve the lives I have given them. -- Doris Lessing fromAlfred and EmilyThis was a very strange book. Lessing did seem to be trying to exorcise the demons of her childhood. The first half of the book is an alternate reality in which Lessing's parents live the lives they were supposed to--without war and without marrying each other! Alfred marries a pretty plump woman, has children and works on an English farm. Emily becomes a nurse, marries a rich surgeon, and uses his fortune to found schools for the poor when he dies suddenly. All this takes place in an England that never went to war (either WWI or WWII.) Because a fairy tale life is boring, Lessing sprinkles in some conflicts with parents, an alcoholic friend, disappointments, etc., but basically they live long and mostly fulfilled lives.In the second half we get all the tragedy of their real lives, the psychological trauma of loss (Alfred's leg in the war, Emily's great love); the family's trials on an unproductive farm in Rhodesia; Alfred's slow decline and death due to diabetes; Emily's grasping need to live through her children (in the fictional version, Emily has no children!) If anyone wants insight into Lessing's writing, this is a good place to start. She says herself that she spent most of her writing life, working out her problems with her mother. But don't mistake this for historical fiction - it's mostly memoir.
    • 3/5
      A combination novella/memoir, the first half about what her parents' lives would have been like if not for World War I, the second, the reality. Like everyone else who lived through that time, their lives were pretty well ruined by the war.I liked the novella - she didn't give them perfect lives, but real ones that included regret and ambiguity. The memoir section was interesting too, about their life on a farm in Rhodesia. Her mother imagined it would be like Happy Valley in Kenya, and it wasn't; the farm was small and pretty much a failure, and her father developed diabetes (he'd already lost a leg in the war) and died fairly young. Much of this part is about how Lessing's mother tried to live through her children and to control them, a theme I think a lot of us can relate to.I don't think I've ever read anything by Doris Lessing before; I think of her as writing dense political books, but this is a wonderful story. I believe it isn't typical of her writing but maybe I'll try some of her other books.
    • 2/5
      The novella, about the lives they might have led had they not married, was intriguing. Their unhappy real lives ... not so much.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book, an insight into her own upbringing and feelings towards here mother were especially interesting. The book is in two parts, the first is fiction about the life she would have wished for her parents and the second part, how it actually was from Doris Lessings own perspective.
    • 2/5
      This was a rather unsatisfying read. The premise was fascinating - Lessing explains in the Foreword that both her parents' lives were blighted by World War One (her father, a vigorous and active man, because he lost his leg, and her mother because her lover died), and so she wanted to reimagine their lives as if the war had never happened. She does this in the first half of the book. Neither parent is given an uncomplicatedly happy life, but her father at least ends up content, and her mother finds fulfillment (although she desperately longs for children and does not have any). Their stories, though, are very rushed - her mother's ten-year marriage is disposed of in 12 pages, and a later flirtation, which lasts five years, in 4 pages. I was also a little disturbed by Lessing's treatment of her mother. She writes, after the first part, that she "enjoyed giving him {her father} someone warm and loving". She also describes her mother's "energy, her humour, her flair, her impetuous way with life", but none of this is visible in the portrait she paints. The second half of the book is supposedly about her parents' real lives - but in fact much more of it is about Lessing herself - random musings mixed with autobiographical snippets. There is enough information about her parents for the reader to understand how trapped and frustrated her mother must have felt by her life in Rhodesia - working on a failing farm, with none of the high-society colonial living that she had expected, with a husband who was dying by slow and painful degrees. There is not enough information to understand why Lessing's relationship with her mother was so difficult - we are told several times that she hated her mother, but it's not easy to understand why the relationship was so venomous.
    • 4/5
      This is a curious book -- part-invention, part memoir. In the first part of the book, Lessing imagines lives for her parents that might have materialized had World War I not affected them. Alfred would have become a properous, happily-married farmer beloved by his children and the town. Emily would have married a prominent doctor, made her way in London society, and widowed young, would have founded a chain of pregressive elementary schools. In real life, Alfred lost a leg in the trenches and was nursed to health by Emily, whom he married. They ended up on a farm in Rhodesia -- he suffered from diabetes and died young, and she struggled to maintain an English bourgeois life in Africa.The imagined lives are interesting if a bit flat as concerns character development. The second part is really a series of memoir essays on Lessing's childhood with chapters about, not only her parents' struggles, but about an old Mwanga tree, insects, the cooking and eating habits of the colonials and her brother. It's an interesting peek into Lessing's life and her musings as an old woman remembering her childhood.