This is definitely a moral wrapped in a gripping novel, but it’s a point well taken. It’s set in England during the Margaret Thatcher years. The protagonist, Alice, is a young woman who believes that the country is hopelessly corrupt, and that the only answer is armed struggle leading to revolution. She has a lot of unexamined faith in Marx, Lenin and the IRA.

Alice is incredibly sensitive and perceptive when it comes to people, and she’s an amazing and resourceful organizer. Most of the novel is dedicated to her work reclaiming an abandoned house, ably handling the bureaucracy involved (even though she mostly despises the people she deals with), deftly manipulating the police, and bringing the occupants into a cohesive group – even the ones who are there mainly because it’s cheap housing.

But they are there for a reason, to smash the state, and so the question is – now what? There are forays to try to connect with other revolutionary movements in other countries, but they are not perceived as serious. So they try to get serious. But they operate with the vague belief that random violence and publicity are enough to bring down this system they hate. And that’s when they self-destruct, taking a bunch of other people with them.

Only just started this but it seems like there are going to be some deep thoughts on scampunking and I am so here for it.

An endlessly infuriating cast of characters

Never a book I would pick up off the shelf, but when a friend recommended it I was happy to try it. Ended up absolutely loving it! Lessing's writing style drew me in like a moth to a candle and I just couldn't put it down. You start out know nothing about what's going on and it's revealed slowly, throughout the whole novel, so that all the pieces of the puzzle only fit together right near the end. Highly recommended to anyone looking for an interesting and sensational book

This book was hard to rate. On one hand I wanted to give it three stars because the plot wasn't particularly thrilling, I couldn't see myself rushing to re-read it, and I'm not really sure if my next argument is compelling enough to enlighten others to read it. On the other hand I wanted to give it five stars because it was a brilliant portrayal of raw emotion, suspicion, and perception. Doris Lessing portrays characters and human emotion so well that I had to accept that it's possible to describe them in written form. Some languages don't have literal words for specific feelings, and even if English doesn't, Lessing molded those words into meaning. For a text to construct its own meaning, that's something right there--usually I can construct the meaning for myself, but this book seems to have done it for me. From the failed relationships, blocked out memories, the 'idgaf' attitudes about the bourgeois/society, to the shattered image of parents and 'friends' who played terrorism, this book was brilliant in its maturation. I absolutely loved the characters--I felt like this book was so much more than a story about a terrorist. I feel like it could have developed in so many more ways--that it had so much more to tell, but it's kind of like that movie "Stranger Than Fiction" in that there's no other way to end it--that its ending is perfect. Another thing that mesmerized me about this book was the feeling that it was unfinished, or rather untold. I felt like there was always something beneath the surface that NEEDED to get out (with Alice's suspicions of people/their accents and her blackouts/memory loss). The entire novel I felt like something needed to get out--something needed to be said, but I couldn't figure out what it was. A lot of things were cleared up when she visited her mother at the end of the novel, and her mother was seen for what she really was/Alice's memories semi-returned, but what still captivates me is the ending. How we finally saw Alice's deranged sense of recollection. How we finally see her developing and flourishing and becoming independent, but it's still a question at the end. Is this maturation permanent? What will Alice do next? Who is she now? And what about her process became a weakness as to seeing people for who they really were? (While some may argue that this point is faulty, I say, sure. Sure, she finally sees people for who they are--at least those around her, but what about the new guy asking about Connors? She even admits that she's not being as critical as she should be, but she's in a rush and doesn't have time to scrutinize him. But why? She has hours before she has to be at the Kubla Khan hotel. [Kubla Khan Hotel!? Does that hotel exist because that's a magnificent hotel name and themes should be explored.] What has her new sense of self given her and what has it taken away?) While I found this book almost impossible to put down, I couldn't give it five stars because I don't feel like I've been able to give it an accurate criticism because of my lack of knowledge. It certainly peaked my interest though, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's seen The Americans (a tv show about the KGB) or anyone who's a fan of politics/1980's Britain. (Also, that was a small qualm of mine: I had no idea what year this was set in until much later in the book.)