Reductio ad genitalia

The Cleft, Doris Lessing


Cleft, n.
1. A crack, crevice, or split.
2. A split or indentation between two parts, as of the chin.
Cleft, v.
A past tense and a past participle of cleave

Cleave, v.tr.
1. To split with or as if with a sharp instrument. See Synonyms at tear1.
2. To make or accomplish by or as if by cutting: cleave a path through the ice.
3. To pierce or penetrate: The wings cleaved the foggy air.
Cleave, v.intr.
1. Mineralogy: To split or separate, especially along a natural line of division.
2. To penetrate or pass through something, such as water or air.

One cannot accuse Lessing of an excess of subtlety in selecting the name of her latest novel, which is also the name of the people in the novel who live by the sea and live playfully edenic lives, reproducing casually through some parthenogenic process until the time of change when the strangely deformed children called Monsters, and later Squirts, start being born.

The Clefts live near a giant crack, crevice, or split in the rocks, which blooms read with algae once a month (just in case you didn't understand the image the first time you read it), they have a split or indentation between two parts in their bodies, from which issue more Clefts, and the mutated Squirts who change everything, and through this peculiar mutation, they are split or separated into two peoples (along a natural line of division, perhaps), and learn a new method of procreation, in which they are pierced or penetrated by the strange, new, and somewhat monstrous squirting organs of the Squirts, who do the kinds of things that no Cleft has ever done, such as making weapons that pierce or penetrate other animals to kill for eating, boats that pass through water as if by cutting... Eh, I could go on, but there's enough cleavage here already.

AS you may have gathered, I am not impressed.This was not a book I had intended to read, not after coming across Ursula K. Le Guin's review of the book. But my partner's mother gave it to me, and I thought to myself, Doris Lessing is, after all, the author of The Golden Notebook, can this really be as bad on so many levels as Le Guin suggests? As it happens, it is.

It's a misbegotten origin fable, bred in some overheated fumbling together of Desmond Morris' Naked Ape and Elaine Morgan's aquatic Eve, that proposes a misogynist essentialism in which women are sluggish, mindless, purposeless, timeless bearers of young and men are the bold, the daring, the innovators, the adventurers, the improvers, the creators of science and engineering and civilisation. In short, it's sexist crap. There is a framing story, that of a rather self-satisfied retired Roman gentleman historian who has gathered together the accounts of this origin tale, and presents it to the reader, complete with observations of his own. Is Lessing trying to tell us in some oblique fashion that it's only due to the male voice of history that we see this fall from shore-mammal grace as a bad thing? Are the Romans - the parents of western civilization - the children only of the Squirts, with anything that might have been good about the way of life of the Clefts lost in the prelapsarian mists? That's the best interpretation I can find to put on this, and it's a stretch.

My advice - don't bother with The Cleft, especially if you have any respect for Doris Lessing and her work.

A Scottish Laird in King George's America

Diana Gabaldon:
Voyager
Drums of August
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Last year, I discovered Diana Gabaldon’s timetravelling romance series about modern-day English nurse (later doctor) Claire Duchamp and 18th century scottish laird and Jacobite supporter Jamie Fraser. I read the first two volumes, Outlanter and Dragonfly in Amber, and enjoyed them very much. I liked the dynamics between the lovers, and the complexities resulting from the displacement of Claire, with her medical experience and modern values, to Jamie’s violent and often superstitious Scotland.

In Dragonfly in Amber, we met Brianna, the grown-up daughter of Claire and Jamie, raised in the 20th century by Claire and her first husband, Frank Randall (the descendent of Captain Jack Randall, the main villain of the first volume), and celebrated at last the reunion of Claire and Fraser after a 20-year separation.

But there were a lot of books in the series still to read, and earlier this year, I read them.

Voyager takes Claire and Jamie from Scotland to the New World, while in the 20th century, Brianna begins to form an attachment with Scottish historian Roger MacKenzie (who is the descendant of the timetraveller Geillis, who is a minor antagonist in the 18th century stoyline, and a collateral branch of Jaime’s own family). Drums of August, The Fiery Cross, and A Breath of Snow and Ashes tell the story of Claire, Jamie, Brianna and Roger in pre-Revolutionary America.

There are many twists and turns, with Jamie re-establishing himself as a landowner and leader of a community of (mostly) Scottish immigrants to the Colonies, trying to negotiate a path between the Crown and the growing revolutionary movement (warned by the timetravelling members of his family that the revolutionaries will win in the end) in an attempt to keep his family and his community safe in violent times.

After six volumes, some of the plot devices are becoming repetitive. This is Jamie and Claire’s second rebellion, this is Jamie’s second time trying to protect the people he counts as his from war and political turbulence. Just about everyone has been abduct at least once, and in some cases more than once, Claire keeps running into other timetravellers at the strangest moments and so on. But the sweep and momentum of the tale remains strong, and the story of Claire and Jamie is just as engaging, even compelling as ever.

I hear the there is at least one more volume coming, and I'll be waiting for it.