3.5
A fascinating character study of middle class people who want to be revolutionaries but reckless amateurs more concerned with the optics of things than the actual real struggle and meaningful actions. They get excited about being a part of a protests with police violence because it seems more real to them. They want to join the IRA then the Soviet Union but they don’t have any real goals in mind other than "tear down the system." Bert and Jasper call themselves communists but never help Alice or Philip with any of the housework and take it all for granted. Alice hates her parents wealth and materialism but is appalled when her mother moves into a tiny flat and she can’t steal from her anymore. It’s definitely a scathing critique of people play acting at being revolutionaries and the deadly consequences this can have when you never really stop and consider the seriousness of your actions.
It’s a slow plot and none of the characters are likable but Lessing writes in a way that holds your attention and keeps your suspense.

I didn't find the book hugely engaging, but I did keep reading. My chief obstacle to enjoying the book was my immense dislike for all of the characters. I felt like they were really quite pathetic, and at first thought the author niave to this. That turned out not to be the case of course, but I didn't care much.

The structure was interesting: 2/3rds of book=cleaning, renovations, housekeeping, final 1/3rd of book=blowing stuff up. Odd.

The characters, while not particularly likeable, were supremely realistic, expertely painted, and that earns Lessing four stars.

It's 1985ish. Alice and her friend Jasper join a squat; it's an old house with no plumbing facilities (so there are buckets full of shit on the top floor), no water, no gas or electricity. The squat is run by fellow comrades in a communist group who want to affiliate to the IRA.

Alice, despite her rabid denunciations of her fascist parents (on whom she sponges, from whom she steals), is, at heart, a nest-maker and one-by-one she solves the problems of the house, taking on the council and the police and burying the shit in a pit in the garden. Some of her comrades help her, others take advantage. Meanwhile she has a complicated non-sexual relationship with her boyfriend (who takes money from her so he can go cruising). Gradually the story evolves from a manual on how to run a squat into a novel chronicling the manoeuvres of splintered extreme left wing groups and how they are used by foreign governments. The climax of the book is the planning of an act of terrorism.

It is a brilliant read. It evokes the political atmosphere of the 1980s when there were (usually IRA-inspired) acts of terrorism on Britain's streets and when the Soviet Union still existed so that it was possible to believe in the leftist rhetoric of proletarian revolution and fascist reaction. But most of all, the characters in the squat are so well-drawn in all their complexities: the hysterical Faye and her lesbian partner Roberta (who is fundamentally Faye's keeper), the physically and psychologically fragile Philip, Jim who is always so happy except when he is utterly depressed, and, of course, Alice, whose complex relationship with her parents provides a compelling backdrop to her fundamental innocence.

But it is also a portrait of inadequacy and hopelessness.

It is written as a more-or-less continuous narrative, unchaptered (but it is paced perfectly, with the major turning-point almost exactly half way through), in the third person but almost entirely from Alice's point of view (though she is very good at reading the verbal cues and body language of others and inferring motives).

Doris Lessing is always hanging out the Left's dirty laundry. This time she does it with young London IRA-aligned communists in the 80s. It can be hard to read a book where everyone is awful to each other and there is nothing to hope for. But Lessing also has this delicious insight, this genius for the tiny 'tells' of interpersonal dynamics. And though she maybe doesn't have the whole truth about the Left, she has enough of the truth that you recognize these characters from a squat or some self-important cadre of Marxist-Leninists.

The truth is I could read this all day.

My rating is 3.5. The book does go into some issues in about modern terrorists. Also the book was able to combine both some horrors of terrorism with humor.

However, I had some problems with the heroine. I found it hard to believe that Alice could be thirty-six and not know certain things; She seems like a very young girl not an almost middle age woman. Even if she were not very bright I think she would have obtained more wisdom. Also she is shown as being older than most of the other radicals. The author failed to explain why she was so much older than the others and why she stayed with Jasper so long.