The Cleft

Doris Lessing

2007, 9780007233441

From Dust.

My first Doris Lessing book - somehow I'd never got round to reading any before - and unfortunately disappointed.
There are some good turns of phrase, but felt some of the ideas and parts of the storyline were left wanting. Did get irritated with the simplistic reiteration of the 'men are from Mars, women are from Venus' type of descriptions of differences between the sexes. There are some interesting ideas to think about, but they weren't really particularly well developed in the novel I thought.

Thought maybe I was missing the point, after all DL is a great writer, so had a look at some other reviews online and found a mix of rave and disappointed reviews, so at least I'm not the only one!

Book covers the start of the human race, arising from females first and how men get on the scene and how humans develop the faculties we take for granted today.

Idea of having a (male) Roman historian/curator assembling oral and written documents from the time and later is a nice turn, but not fully exploited.