Good Things 

There remain good things in this world, but I don’t write much about them. This post will be an exception, as I am going to tell you about The Book Addict. This is a used book store in my town, located in a strip mall, as are so many little shops these days, and I love the place. It is small, I guess maybe 20 feet wide by 40 feet deep, if that, and made up of a labyrinth of shelves that hold thousands of books, with hand-lettered signs marking the various categories: Literature, Canadian History, Biography, etc.

It is, to be honest, too much to take in. I’m sure when I am in there my gaze passes over dozens of books that would interest me, but which I don’t even notice, due to pure sensory overload. That’s ok, it just means that it is always fruitful to go back and browse through again. I have never gone in there without emerging with an armful of used volumes, but my last visit was particularly rewarding.

I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but in the Literature section I came across several novels written by Doris Lessing. This is significant only because commentaries on her life and work appear frequently in my favourite literary magazine, The Times Literary Supplement. She is always written about approvingly there, and so she has been on my purely mental ‘I should read’ list. Well, here was my chance, so I selected ‘The Good Terrorist’, which the inside cover said had been originally published in 1985. That surprised me, as I had a vision of her (based on nothing much) as an early 20^th century British author. Turns out I was not so wrong, as I have since learned that she was born to British parents in Persia in 1919, then lived on a farm in what was then Southern Rhodesia until moving to London as an adult in 1949 with her son. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 at the age of 88. This woman was a mid-20^th century writer, but had a very long career, writing more than 30 novels, the first published in 1950, along with other work, including opera libretti and four plays. Some of her later novels are apparently science fiction.

Back to the book. I am more halfway through The Good Terrorist and it is smashingly good. Lessing was apparently a confirmed leftist in her youth. MI5 and MI6 compiled a file on her that covered 20 years of her life. Well, this book is a very clear-eyed look at the sort of people who embrace that sort of thinking. The book is set in London during the Thatcher years, and the main characters, all on the dole, are members of The Communist Centre Union, who are eager to explain to anyone who will listen why that ‘Centre’ in their organisation’s name is very important. They go to demonstrations, discuss whether they should ally themselves with the IRA, and generally take themselves very seriously. No Trotskyists allowed, they have decided. It is first and foremost a novel about people, and its protagonist is an impossibly smart and competent woman who is very very good at sizing people up, but has no clue about her own psyche.

Lessing has ‘the writer’s eye’, her writing lets you see very situation in the novel with utter clarity. Interestingly, after starting this novel, I read an online ‘literary analysis’ of Lessing’s novels which was quite dismissive of this particular book. I rather suspect this stems from the novel’s less-than-heroic portrayal of its wanna-be revolutionaries. That doesn’t play well in 21^st-century literary circles. Perhaps I won’t like Lessing’s other writing as much as The Good Terrorist, – but there is only one way to find out.

I will be going back to The Book Addict sometime after I finish this for more Lessing, you can be sure, but on this last visit I also scored a volume containing three of E. M. Forster’s novels, and a copy of James Michener’s Poland. With my surname I have to read that last one, and Forster is another 20^th century English novelist whose name comes up regularly in the TLS.

So, at this last Book Addict stop I scored 5 novels for $13, tax included. Even if only the Lessing novel turns out to be good, I am so ahead of the game it’s not funny.

The Book Addict. One of the 21^st century’s Very Good Shops.

The Good Terrorist. One of the 20^th century’s Very Good Novels.