In Pursuit of the English
Author | : Doris Lessing |
Publisher | : Harper Collins |
Total Pages | : 182 |
Release | : 2010-10-05 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780062034885 |
ISBN-13 | : 006203488X |
Rating | : 4/5 (88X Downloads) |
Download or read book In Pursuit of the English written by Doris Lessing and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the most authentic books ever written about the English....Funny, touching and so real that the smell and taste of London seem to rise from its pages." — San Francisco Chronicle In Pursuit of the English is a novelist's account of a lusty, quarrelsome, unscrupulous, funny, pathetic, full-blooded life in a working-class rooming house. It is a shrewd and unsentimental picture of Londoners you've probably never met or even read about--though they are the real English. The cast of characters — if that term can be applied to real people — includes: Bobby Brent, a con man; Mrs. Skeffington, a genteel woman who bullies her small child and flings herself down two flights of stairs to avoid having another; and Miss Priest, a prostitute, who replies to Lessing's question "Don't you ever like sex?" with "If you're going to talk dirty, I'm not interested." In swift, barbed style, in high, hard, farcical writing that is eruptively funny, Doris Lessing records the joys and terrors of everyday life. The truth of her perception shines through the pages of a work that is a brilliant piece of cultural interpretation, an intriguing memoir and a thoroughly engaging read.