DORIS LESSING

Doris Lessing’s eventful and controversial life is seen from the outside in this well-researched bio, which is enlivened in audio. Lacking the cooperation of her subject, Klein reconstructs the novelist’s early years in apartheid Africa, flirtation with communism, love affairs, domestic failures, and later life in postwar England from interviews, articles, and Lessing’s own autobiography, Under My Skin. What emerges is a serious, analytical work for which Anna Fields’s earnest tone, low-pitched voice, and deliberate pace are well suited. Klein’s neutral approach is mirrored in Fields’s straightforward reading, although one hears empathy and irony (and a faint echo) at times. Little pauses surround quotes and readings from Lessing’s works, not many of which are available in audio. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 02]