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Read The Real Thing: Stories And Sketches (1993)

The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches (1993)

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3.52 of 5 Votes: 1
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ISBN
0060924179 (ISBN13: 9780060924171)
Language
English
Publisher
harper perennial

The Real Thing: Stories And Sketches (1993) - Plot & Excerpts

(American edition is titled The Real Thing)A collection of eighteen short stories and "sketches" -- I suppose the "sketches" are the stories where not as much happens -- all of which take place in London. These are all quite good stories, though perhaps on average not quite as good as some of her earlier collections. They were written over a decade or so, and are all essentially realistic vignettes of ordinary people's lives.This time last year I read several collections of short stories by the American writer John Updike -- not in the same class as Lessing, but his earlier stories are good and similar to these in subject. Then he began to recycle them with different names and slightly different situations in collection after collection, until they were totally boring at the end. Most short story writers do this to some extent. What amazes me is that with Lessing -- in her seventies when this was published -- the stories are all fresh and original, not one reminded me strongly of any other story I have read by her, and I've read almost all of them. Lessing is one writer who wholly deserved her Nobel Prize -- I'm just amazed she had to wait so long for it.While a few stories here are tragic or at least concerned with unhappy people, the overall tone is upbeat -- Lessing obviously loves the city, and some of the stories reminded me of my own earlier life in New York City, especially the sketch called "In Defense of the Underground" -- I felt the same way about the subways in NYC, they were really the essence of the city's life.

The entire book is not worth a read if you're looking for a proper collection of short stories. Most of it are just sketches, incomplete and unsatisfying. There may be some parts that those with writer's block may wish to pick up on and develop but on the whole I was quite disappointed. There are some interesting stories like The Mother of the Child in Question, Womb Ward, Principles, The New Café, Romance 1988, The Pit, Two Old Women and a Young One and The Real Thing but even these pale in comparison to really good short stories.

What do You think about The Real Thing: Stories And Sketches (1993)?

I'm very sad to say that this was a big disappointment. I guess I had too high expectations but then again, who can blame me? It's a London-based (one of my big passions) book containing short stories written by a well-known contemporary female Nobel Prize winner. Why yes, I was excited. The first story, 'Debbie and Julie', and the story 'In Defence Of The Underground' are the only stories that I actually enjoyed and the only reason why I'm giving this two stars instead of one. The main reason b
—Leila

Once upon a time (in 2008/9) I spent a Christmas/New Year sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the lounge in a flat my son and his wife shared with another couple. And not once did I come across the London in this stories: mean, cold, heartless, petty, gross and dirty.Doris Lessing knows how to use words together, how to control words, how to put the words together for effect and to be both economical and yet figurative with language. It's her subject matter that in places I find repellent. Just a personal thing.
—Diane Warrington

+JMJA gift from the beautiful and beloved J.G.I'm sorry to say this, but this is just bad work. Most of the pieces in this book are sketches, not stories, and the few that are stories are terrible. "Storms" is good, but the rest, as Kakutani noted, feel rushed, unfinished: the characters are all as flat as a line, mere words on a page. This may be the result of trying to compress too much into a small space: their backgrounds all involve multiple divorces, multiple adulteries, multiple children with multiple people, and it can get hard for the reader to keep track of who is related to whom. It might take a novel to do justice to what, in a few lines, Lessing tells us about these characters.The stories usually have some sort of twist ending, but this device loses its effect after the first two or three times; the twist becomes expected.Worst of all is her prose: there are punctuation errors on nearly every page, cliches abounding (e.g. "she was nothing but trouble"), and more ellipses than a bad email. I trust that she won her Nobel not for this book.
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