The Cleft: A Novel

The second to last book published before the 94 year old Nobel Prize winner died in 2013, The Cleft is Doris Lessing’s most revolutionary and self-evident act of mythopoeia (i.e., myth making). The novel’s narrator is an aging, not-so reliable Roman historian who has an adulteress wife; and, yes, the reader is concerned from the beginning; he may be a bit irritated with the female race and now gets control over telling the story for all the ages about how men and women were created. However, never fear, for Lessing reverses the major tenets of the Christian creation myth by dismantling the credibility behind man’s ability to write an unbiased, ego-less history, enticing book buyers who are not only followers of all fiction created by Doris Lessing but feminists and mythology lovers as well.The narrator begins with what feminists would hope to be Lessing’s version. We learn that the first inhabitants of earth are females, the Cleft watchers (later called simply Clefts) who know from birth, they will be mothers. These ancient women rely on the deep crevice named Cleft, which has red flowers that break off and flow down to the sea as a way for the females to enter the water where the moon and the sea make them fertile. Except for a yearly sacrifice of one female who is thrown into the abyss of the Cleft, they live happily until, for some unknown reason, they give birth to “Squirts” also called “Monsters” who possess a strange tube – and so men enter society.Like other writers, such as Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter, who recreate cultural myths to offer feminist commentary on patriarchy, Lessing turns the “birds and the bees” story upside down with her tale of a maternal society that gives birth to men without mating: a true subversion of the Eve springing from Adam’s rib. However, as seen in The Golden Notebook, Lessing is never that one-sided or simplistic in her writer’s purpose. This maternal society eventually mutilates the boys and takes them to the Killing Rock in order to create a genocide that would preserve their utopian feminine world. Through this fantasy, the female reader is reminded that, as Lessing suggests, we are not so perfect either. As seen in her fantasy The Memoir of a Survivor, Lessing does not want to be the goddess for the female cause and is more interested in a world that will evolve into a culture that allows individualism and the evolution of society.The novel is not without humor, and this is just another device Lessing uses to reveal a truth within the fantasy. As seen as a theme in one of her first novels, Martha Quest, Lessing believes cultural myths mold our identity and our roles in life; consequently, the success of The Cleft as mythopoeia relies on her creating a myth that is clearly seen as a myth, which asks the reader to make the comparisons between her fantasy and reality. The Roman narrator, after all is just a dreamer, perhaps not a historian at all, or is Lessing posing a question here: What’s the difference? No doubt, the reader will enjoy Lessing’s tongue and cheek tone while unraveling the layers of mythology.

If Doris Lessing has won international recognition for her writing, I seriously hope that was before anyone had read The Cleft. This is another story of a women-only nation and what happens when men appear. It also explains that a women-only society can exist via parthenogenisis, but eventually the magic of having only female progeny fails and "deformed" humans are born (i.e., males). There have been other stories with female-only societies where, at some point, men appear, but they were done much better. Lessing's story has such stereotyped gender identities that I found it preposterous. Also, there were so many places where she decided to ignore physics, biology and chemistry (when that wasn't even vaguely necessary) that the story lost any believability-- even the kind of limited believability that typical dystopian or utopian stories exhibit. If this novel is meant to be for preteens, it sells preteens short.

Beautiful, haunting, and a really interesting idea for a story. This book works like Golding's The Inheritors by focusing on the early stages of a society. I also purchased this book and got a great matchbook deal so that I had a hard copy and less expensive Kindle copy, which was a bonus. This is, by far, my favorite book from Lessing.

To be honest, I wouldn't have chosen this book on my own if it weren't a selected reading for my book group. I continued reading it because I'm an optimist: I hoped it would get better. I was disappointed, despite the fact that Ms. Lessing is/was a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The characters are few and shallow, not much development. The plot is a recap of the 'beginning of mankind', retold using bits of history and myth by a Roman senator living during the reign of Nero. It was like reading mythology, without the colorful characters. This is the first I've read of Ms. Lessing's work, but it doesn't inspire me to read any others.

I have now had my kindle for more than 6 months, and The Cleft was one of the first roughly contemporary texts on which I took a roll of the dice, and I have to agree with the critical reviews Amazon lists. The Cleft is a bad idea in the hands of a great author, and the juxtapostion between the Imperial Roman life we can all reach back to against this proto-human society isn't enough. I sense, at times, that Lessing wants to radicalize feminist anger to the point of being repulsive, but she never quite overcomes her own limitations through dealing with the creation of pre-civilized humanity. Sample her science fiction, her South African stories, but take a pass on this, because nothing actually happens that makes this worth the effort.

I enjoyed very much the novel, as I have with every work by Doris Lessing. Very interesting from the psychological point of view.

I lked the fact that the item I received was as described.

Perfect novel; It seems to tell the things that can not be explained by words

An interesting exploration of feminism from the viewpoint of a Roman historian and senator.Certainly a novel theme, providing you can swallow the blend of message and myth.

A really tedious book. Would not recommend, don't waste your time/money with this.

Great book

A very disappointing introduction to Doris Lessing's books. With her reputation I expected more but this was like a half-finished essay that was never really meant for publication. The initial idea seemed worth exploring, but very soon after starting to read it I just wanted the book to end, and only bothered finishing it because I was reading it for a book club discussion.

The Cleft Thank you for the reviews on this item, I followed a reviewer (sorry can't remember who) from another book review, and bought this book for the first time ever on the strength of a reviewers comments only. Never heard of Doris Lessing, I found it very thought provoking and will definitely be checking out her other books. Oral mythology at its simplest and best - profound but not perfect, but what is The Cleft