Summer Before The Dark

Summer Before The Dark (1973) by Doris Lessing ? Jonathan Cape ? ISBN 0224008323 ? First Edition ? Condition: Good There are summers when people go to the seaside, eat too much ice cream and complain about the weather. And then there are summers when the carefully assembled machinery of middle-class life starts making a suspicious rattling noise and someone begins wondering whether the entire thing was put together correctly in the first place. Doris Lessing?s Summer Before The Dark , first published in 1973, belongs very much to the second category. At the centre of the novel is Kate Brown, a middle-aged wife and mother whose life has largely been defined by the requirements of other people. Family, husband, children, domestic arrangements, social expectations ? the usual collection of responsibilities that somehow accumulate until a person discovers they have become extremely efficient at running a life they are no longer entirely sure belongs to them. Then, with her children away and her husband occupied elsewhere, Kate finds herself unexpectedly presented with something dangerous: freedom. Rather than immediately purchasing a sports car or joining a commune, she takes a job as an interpreter for an international conference. This introduces her to a different world of travel, hotels, professional responsibilities and people who have no particular interest in whether the washing has been brought in. From there, the familiar framework of her life begins quietly coming apart. What follows is not so much a dramatic escape as a slow and often uncomfortable examination of identity. Kate begins to question the roles she has accepted, the appearance she has maintained, the expectations placed upon women, and the unsettling possibility that much of what society calls a personality may simply be a collection of habits performed for the convenience of everyone else. Lessing, naturally, is not particularly interested in making any of this cosy. Summer Before The Dark is a novel about ageing, marriage, independence, femininity, illness, appearance, loneliness and the strange process of discovering what remains when the usual labels are removed. It is thoughtful, psychological and occasionally uncomfortable in exactly the way that good Doris Lessing novels tend to be. She does not so much reassure the reader as politely remove the chair they were sitting on and ask why they needed it. This is a 1973 Jonathan Cape first edition , and the book itself remains in pretty good condition . There is, however, one small mystery. On the rear is a pencil scribble reading ?980 1214 10AM? . An attempt was made to erase it, but the inscription has proved more determined than expected and remains visible. What this means is unknown. It may have been a telephone number, an appointment, a coded message, a reminder to invade somewhere at ten in the morning, or simply the work of a previous owner who had access to a pencil and insufficient respect for posterity. We tried rubbing it out. It won. Accordingly, it remains part of the book?s history, whether anybody likes it or not. For collectors, this is still an appealing early copy of an important Doris Lessing novel, and the stubborn pencil notation arguably gives it rather more personality than a completely immaculate volume that has spent fifty years sitting untouched behind glass. Ideal for readers of twentieth-century literary fiction, collectors of Doris Lessing, anyone interested in novels about women reassessing their lives, or those who enjoy books in which absolutely nothing explodes but quite a lot quietly falls apart. Another respectable survivor from Crappy Old Books ? complete with literary significance, existential unease and a mysterious appointment at 10AM that, more than half a century later, we regret to inform you has probably been missed.…