16/5 - I'm a bit scared to start this because it looks deep and complicated and I'm worried I won't understand it. The plot sounds interesting, but the language could be difficult. A bit like what happened with Blood Meridian. Okay, here I go... To be continued...18/5 - I'm not a fan of well and truly adult women (she's 36!) behaving like innocent 17-year-olds. For the last 39 pages Alice has behaved like a fool; begging for handouts from her parents (50 pounds), verbally and nearly physically abused by her petulant, idiotic boyfriend Jasper and being generally annoying in her naïve belief that the council will ever take the side of some scruffy-looking squatters over the chance to make more money. Council greed, narrow-mindedness and stupidity is pretty much universal and unchanged by the passing of the years. Mum says I should, but I just can't work up enough energy to feel any empathy for a woman crying over a blocked toilet ('evil men' filled the bowls with cement in attempt to make it impossible to use the house as a squat). Why is she with Jasper? Her internal monologue suggests a strong, intelligent woman (despite getting teary over toilets), so why is she allowing Jasper to treat her like dirt.At least the language has been normal, so that's a hurdle I don't have to worry about. To be continued...Later on page 58 - She wants to abolish fascist imperialism? How can anyone abolish a way of thinking? Take Nazism, for example, if any 'ism' has been 'abolished' or anything close to it, it's Nazism. And yet, there are still pockets, or communities, of Nazis all over the world, thinking the way they want to think and no public or government movement is going to change their minds. One minute Alice is determined to achieve her goals (mostly unattainable though they may be) and the next she's saying/thinking the stupidest, most naïve thoughts a 36-year-old has ever thought. If I didn't know any better I'd thinks she's been borrowed from one of the rubbish YA novels that kindly Khanh reads for public amusement and edification and safety. To be continued...22/5 - Alice is beginning to grow on me, plus she hasn't behaved like a whiny teenager for at least 50 pages, so my annoyance with her is fading. I don't understand what Andrew from next door put in the pit in their yard, but Alice did. It's unclear to me whether the reader should have known or not. Hopefully it's revealed more transparently later in the story. To be continued...Later - I have to ask again, what does Alice gain from her relationship with Jasper? She hasn't come out and stated it to the reader outright, but it seems clear to me why Jasper is with Alice, but I don't see what she gets out of it. He takes the majority of the money she begs, steals, and borrows; he treats her like crap, and all for what? She claims she loves him, appears to have romantic and intimate thoughts about him but is well aware of his proclivities. He rebuffs any show of affection from her and shows almost none at all toward her. She feels lucky if he allows her to sleep in the same room, even if it is in sleeping bags on opposite sides of the room. That's not love, that's not even plutonic friendship. That's one person using another's emotions against them, emotional blackmail. To be continued...Later on page 179 - Alice is transforming before my very eyes. The more times she spends with Comrade Andrew from next door, the more I see how truly dangerous she could be. The other inhabitants of No. 43 just seem to be playing at the game of being revolutionaries - going to the picket line because it's fun, or it's the least that's expected of a CCU member, doing small stuff like getting arrested at a protest rally - while Alice sits at home cleaning up the squat and putting on an innocuous, mothering front. All the while she's watching people, reading their true natures on their faces, and deciding who will be useful at a later date. If she does decide to do something I hope she starts with drop-kicking Jasper right out of the squat, and her life. She's just played a game of 'what if' with herself, imagining her life without the millstone that is Jasper dragging her down. I cheered, but then she reminded herself that she loves him, and I booed. To be continued...Later on page 234 - Who or what were Cruise (pretty sure she's not talking about Tom), Trident and the Women of Greenham Common? Have to look them up.Alice is so blind! She hates the bourgeoisie, but has no problem taking and spending their money. Does it never occur to her to wonder where the bourgeois class gets their money? They work for it. It's not handed to them by their wealthy parents, as often seems to be the case for Alice and those she supports. Why do they eat out or get takeaway so much? Were the 80s a time when home brand spaghetti and home brand Bolognese sauce cost more than fish 'n' chips? Otherwise, it just seems wasteful. The same with all the cigarettes. If they were really feeling the crunch those are some luxuries, some middle class luxuries they could have been going without to save money. To be continued...SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT25/5 - Phew, finished it! It was so DNFy that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to. It picked up in the middle, but then the last 30 pages or so, got a bit weird and left me wondering what was really going on. The conclusion was confusing and seemed to be purposefully tempting the reader to disbelieve what they'd read, to think that maybe Alice had been experiencing some kind of breakdown, and the majority of the book was all in her head.I don't know what the summaries from the backs of the other editions of The Good Terrorist say, or infer, about the story, but mine was very misleading:'In a London squat, a band of revolutionaries unite in their loathing for the waste and cruelty they see in the world around them. But soon they become involved in terrorist activities far beyond their level of competence.Only Alice, motherly, practical and determined seems capable of organising anything. She likes to be on the battlefront: picketing, being bound over and spray-painting slogans. But her enthusiasm is also easy to exploit and she soon becomes ideal fodder for the group's more dangerous and potent cause. When their naïve radical fantasies turn into a chaos of real destruction, they realise that their lives will never be the same again.''But soon they become involved in terrorist activities far beyond their level of competence.' This is only true if 'soon' is defined as being 300+ pages into a 397 page book. The first 300 pages are focused on Alice and her efforts to clean up the house and look after the other squatters.'her enthusiasm is also easy to exploit and she soon becomes ideal fodder for the group's more dangerous and potent cause.'That sentence makes it sound like Alice is tricked into providing assistance with a mission without realising the danger she's in, but that's not what happens AT ALL. The most danger Alice is in is of being taken advantage of because she's so good at looking after people and sorting out crises. The other squatters quickly begin to look in her direction whenever there's a household or personal duty to take care of. They never think of doing anything themselves. A couple of them (Faye) say "Oh, I don't care if you fix up the house. So, it's all your responsibility to look after and it needs to be your money that gets spent." but I'm never going to believe that people would rather pee and poo in buckets that never get emptied, they just sit there polluting the second level of the house with the smell, than have the toilets and water restored for the princely sum of 50 pounds.'When their naïve radical fantasies turn into a chaos of real destruction, they realise that their lives will never be the same again.'The 'chaos of real destruction' happened with less than 20 pages to go, not giving the characters time to think of their futures. One by one, over the next eleven pages, Jasper, Bert, Caroline, Jocelin, and Roberta left No. 43, leaving Alice six pages to quietly unravel through an internal monologue running her head. I call false advertising - that blurb bears very little resemblance to what Lessing wrote.Not a lot happened in The Good Terrorist, I was expecting a story where Alice was a revolutionary who didn't really want to be a revolutionary. She joined, not really understanding what she was getting into, and then once she did see she did everything she could to keep the others calm and turn them away from acts of violence. It only works to start with and eventually she is forced to participate in the main goal, mass destruction. She does everything she can to spoil the plans or get the police involved (she doesn't want her friends arrested, she just doesn't want innocent people to die), but they don't listen or don't believe her and the final climax would feature the 'mass destruction', Alice's role in it and the aftermath. That's the kind of book I was expecting, not a domestic drama; what I got was much more, perhaps too much, focused on Alice's 'renovations on a budget'. 3.5 stars.
The story moves very slowly, and things really only start to happen in the final act, yet I was never bored by this book. Doris Lessing's writing is like one of the finer social satirists of the 19th or early 20th century, writing about contemporary events, or at least contemporary for the 1980s, when this book was written. The Good Terrorist is about Alice Mellings, who is, with great and lasting irony, exactly the sort of comfy-making, boo-boo kissing motherly type as her own mother was, even though Alice is now a "revolutionary" who spits on everything her horrible, awful, no-good shitty bourgeois parents stand for, when she isn't begging them for money (and stealing from them when they won't give it).The grown woman of solidly middle-class Brits, Alice was given everything by her parents, including a good university education. But we learn that her fractured relationship with both mother and father (who are themselves divorced) is at the root of all Alice's discontents. Now her father is remarried and running a business and trying to wash his hands of his problem child of a grown daughter, and her mother has turned into an impoverished alcoholic. Alice's interactions with her parents are painful because it's one of those situations where an outside observer can easily see that if just one of them would bend, just a little bit, they could make peace, but they always manage to say exactly the wrong things to each other, and neither Alice nor her parents ever have the emotional maturity to talk like grown-ups without verbal knives drawn.When not being reduced to an eternally rebellious teenager in the presence of her parents, Alice is a whirlwind of industriousness and hard work ethic, even though it's all applied to keeping an "approved tenancy" in which she and her fellow communist "revolutionaries" are squatting from being demolished by the council. Her co-revolutionaries are all freeloading under-achievers like Alice, the difference being that she could easily make something of her life, while most of her "comrades" are just plain losers.But amidst all their "organizing" and "protesting" and "sticking it to the fat capitalist pigs," a plan gradually emerges to work with either the IRA or with their revolutionary Russian comrades. At first this seems like as much a joke as any of their other plans, since Alice is the only one who ever actually does anything, and she's mostly doing housework and den-mothering all these wanker wannabes. What would the IRA or the Soviets want with a bunch of idiots like these? But if you insist on being a useful idiot long enough, someone will use you, and like shadows at the edges of a campfire, the real actors out there begin to come circling.The Good Terrorist isn't a suspense novel or a spy thriller or a crime caper. It's a character drama, with a bunch of interesting characters who are all much alike except in that they are each individuals with their own problems and quirks, and they're all kind of unlikable idiots, even before they start getting in over their heads with real bad guys. Only Alice is sympathetic, and she's still as much of a fool and a naif as the rest of them, it's just that in her case, we can see all the wasted energy and potential. Her entire life has been spent in a kind of dreamworld, living for other people, being shaped by other people's opinions of her, and deliberately looking away from ugly reality. She's too good for the people around her, but she also pretty much deserves what she gets.I might have wished there was a bit more action, maybe a twist or two, but The Good Terrorist held my attention and Doris Lessing's writing had no real weakness other than a leisurely in-no-hurry-to-get-anywhere pace. This wasn't an exciting book and the plot is only there to make the characters do things while we get to know them, but the day-to-day mundanity of the story is deceptive, and if that's all you see, you're missing the point, which is the banality of evil and the obligation of anyone who wants to consider themselves a "good" person to not do nothing when other people are doing things you know are wrong. I'll definitely read more by Lessing; she delivers wonderful characterization with sharp, straight-faced black humor. This book is like a verbal confection of delicate (and indelicate) interpersonal dialog and nuanced character studies. With a bomb at the center.
Do You like book The Good Terrorist (2003)?
Book Club pick for April. 80's London--what a different place! Frustrating book, the main character is so annoyingly misguided and she makes us worry about all sorts of things that aren't her problem. She is stressing me out! It doesn't really get any better. At the end it is revealed that what's her name (pretty bad when I can't remember the main character's name one week after I finish the book) is basically nuts, but what about all the other characters? She doesn't seem much more insane than
—Jennifer
Doris Lessing’s novel The Good Terrorist takes a look at the behind the scene workings of a terrorist or revolutionary group and the human interactions that take place within it. Lessing’s portrayal of the people in the group is realistic and shows these revolutionaries as humans. She demonstrates that the people who take part in these organizations are not all absolute demons but people who are imperfect and make mistakes. Her characters are incredibly complex. Lessing does an incredible job developing her characters. She doesn’t make them seem completely good or evil. Lessing gives them depth and, at times, even shows their vulnerability, allowing you to feel sympathetic for even the most despicable character in the novel. I didn’t know what to think about this novel at first. Being an American, there is always a fear in our country about terrorist attacks, especially after 911. Even the title, The Good Terrorist, threw me off at first, making me question and doubt whether or not I wanted to read this book. Although the communist movement was a big theme throughout this novel, the focus was on the main character, Alice, her struggles and her interactions with the other revolutionaries. There was not one character in this book that I liked, I hated all of them but I liked that Lessing made them complex and didn’t just demonize them. She adds depth to her characters that make you want to continue to read about them no matter how much you hate them. One such character, for me, was Alice. In the beginning of the novel, I absolutely hated her. I thought she was a pathetic woman who just let people walk all over her. Alice was the kind of character I can’t stand, one who lives to please other people despite herself and her own needs. Then as the story went on, my opinion of her changed constantly. I thought she was selfish and immature, she constantly did things that I just couldn’t understand. Despite this bad opinion of her, towards the end of the novel I found myself rooting for her and hoping that she would open her eyes, realize that she was wasting her time with these people, then go actually do something to help the cause. At times, I even found myself admiring some of her natural talents, like her skill for manipulation. In the end of the book, Alice completely disappointed me and I still absolutely hated her but she was so entertaining to read about that at times I couldn’t take my eyes off the page. I found myself engrossed in her emotional struggles and completely caught up in wondering what she would do next. Although the end was completely unexpected and suspenseful, the beginning itself almost turned me off from the book. It seemed like it took me forever to get past the first hundred pages. They just dragged on and nothing really amazing happened. The suspenseful, hold-your-breath scenes really didn’t come in until the last fifty pages of the book. Despite the boring beginning, I did enjoy the novel and will probably be reading more novels by Doris Lessing in the future.
—Hannah
It was around March 5th that I discovered it was Women's History Month. I was reading a book back then - a leftover of Black History Month - that I wasn't much enjoying. I quickly set it aside. There is a lot of literature I want to read that is written by women. But I could tell that no fiction was going to lift me out of whatever reading malaise it was that I acquired after finishing James Baldwin's lovely "Go Tell It On The Mountain". I picked up Naomi Klein's latest book and read two hundred pages. I wasn't impressed just yet, but I can see it is building towards something. At least, I think I can see that. Anyways, this is a review of the book that I picked up after those two hundred, unsatisfying pages, suddenly feeling like I needed to really let my mind settle into fiction again.The book was The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing.There is much to be said about this book and its exploration of terrorism in the late twentieth century. It is a satire, perhaps. Or, perhaps it is more specifically an insulting depiction of radicalism, its disorganization, its dependence upon incomplete, broken humans who desire so much but are convinced that they desire nothing. Does this make any sense yet? I'm not sure. Doris does it so well though that, all of a sudden, somehow, it does. And it is beautiful.As many reviews have shown, though, the real triumph in this book lies in the characters rather than the plot. It centres around a commune/squat in London and its rotating membership. And these characters are interesting, tragic figures. Spurned by life. Seeking success. Fomenting hatred. Getting along and refusing to get along. Lessing clearly recognized that they needed to be well-developed because, in the end, not much really happens in this book. Lots of small events, sure, but things only really pick up in the last hundred pages.That doesn't mean the first 250 are bad pages. In fact, I think they are my favourite pages - the last few, while still very good, clearly moved the book in a different direction and, to my mind, the book was weakened somewhat as a result. That said, if the book started in satire, it also ended in satire. The middle was devoted to the characters.And one character in particular. Alice Mellings, the narrator and protagonist. And the reader vacillates in their judgement of her. Sometimes she is the calm, precise, intelligent, thoughtful figure. The maternal character in the home who is caring for everybody when they need caring and preventing catastrophes when they need to be prevented. Also the figure who is most frequently overlooked, despite her incredible contributions to the community. Alice is also the character with whom you grow most impatient. She makes silly choices, and abuses the wrong people in her life. She is terribly weak in all the wrong ways. And when she falters she seems to falter in all the wrong moments. And, in the end, you decide she is an unreliable narrator, and you have to wonder if what she has told you is true or just some falsified memory. The thing is, Lessing builds her up to have these flaws right from the get go, but they are dominated, rather than balanced, by the many great things that Alice does for her community. So you are a bit disappointed in your own judgement of her character when you reach the end.The frustrating thing was that I understood Alice so well. I related to her perfectly. I saw myself in her, and then momentarily recognized myself in her band of friends. But Alice, above all others in this novel, may be one of the great characters of all the novels I have read. This is my second Lessing novel, but I'll definitely be reading more. A Briefing for a Descent into Hell or Shikasta will be next, and hopefully before the end of the calendar year. I was impressed by what I saw - a controlled, brilliant mind was at work here. One whose opinions are clear and precise, and whose understanding of humanity is equally refined but entirely conflicted.
—Neal Adolph
