The Good Terrorist

She considers herself a revolutionary, fighting against "fascist imperialism", [4] but is still dependent on her parents, whom she treats with contempt. In the early s, Alice joins a squat of like-minded "comrades" [5] in a derelict house in London. Other members of the squat include Bert, its ineffective leader, and a lesbian couple, the maternal Roberta and her unstable and fragile partner Faye.

The abandoned house is in a state of disrepair and earmarked by the City Council for demolition. In the face of the indifference of her comrades, Alice takes it upon herself to clean up and renovate the house. She also persuades the authorities to restore the electricity and water supplies.

Alice becomes the house's "mother", cooking for everyone, and dealing with the local police, who are trying to evict them. Alice involves herself in some of these activities, but spends most of her time working on the house. A more organised group of revolutionaries moves in next door and start using Alice's house as a conduit for arms, to which Alice objects.

The comrades eventually decide to act on their own, calling themselves "Freeborn British Communists". Alice does not fully support this action, but accepts the majority decision. They target an upmarket hotel in Knightsbridge , but their inexperience results in the premature detonation of the bomb, which kills Faye and several passers-by. The remaining comrades, shaken by what they have done, decide to leave the squat and split up. Alice, disillusioned by Jasper, chooses not to follow him and remains behind because she cannot bear to abandon the house into which she has poured so much effort.

Despite her initial reservations about the bombing, Alice feels a need to justify their actions to others, but realises it would be fruitless because "[o]rdinary people simply didn't understand". Doris Lessing 's interest in politics began in the s while she was living in Southern Rhodesia now Zimbabwe. She was attracted to a group of "quasi-Communist[s]" [12] and joined the chapter of the Left Book Club in Salisbury now Harare. She became a member of the British Communist Party in the early s, and was an active campaigner against the use of nuclear weapons.

By , Lessing had published six novels, but grew disillusioned with Communism following the Hungarian uprising and, after reading The Sufis by Idries Shah , turned her attention to Sufism , an Islamic belief system. Archives , which drew on Sufi concepts. The series was not well received by some of her readers, [14] who felt she had abandoned her "rational worldview". The Good Terrorist was Lessing's first book to be published after the Canopus in Argos series, which prompted several retorts from reviewers, including, "Lessing has returned to Earth", [17] and "Lessing returns to reality".

There's a great deal of playacting that I don't think you'd find in extreme left revolutionaries in societies where they have an immediate challenge. I started to think, what kind of amateurs could they be? Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer , Louise Yelin called the work a novel about politics, rather than a political novel per se. The Good Terrorist has also been called a satire. In her book Doris Lessing: Border Crossings , described it as a "dry and satirical examination of a woman's involvement with a left-wing splinter group". Kuehn felt that it is not satire at all and that while the book could have been a "satire of the blackest and most hilarious kind", [3] in his opinion Lessing "has no sense of humor, and instead of lashing [the characters] with the satirist's whip, she treats them with unremitting and belittling irony".

Virginia Scott called the novel a fantasy. Drawing on Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in The International Fiction Review , she wrote that "[Lessing's] Alice with her group of political revolutionaries can be seen as a serious fantasy which has striking parallels to Carroll's Alice has to navigate passages too small to fit through, while Lessing's Alice finds herself in a barely inhabitable house that is earmarked for demolition.

The American novelist Judith Freeman wrote that one of the common themes in The Good Terrorist is that of keeping one's identity in a collective , of preserving "individual conscience". Freeman said that Alice is a "quintessential good woman Another theme present is the symbolic nature of the house. England is represented by a house in London". Political Oppression and Masculine Obstinacy in Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist " , Lalbakhsh and Yahya suggest that the house, and the "oppressive relations" in it, [32] reflect similar oppressive relations in society.

Several critics have focused on the theme of motherhood. More episodes Previous You are at the first episode. Episode 2 — The Good Terrorist. Related Content You may also like. Similar programmes By genre: Home Help Schedule Downloads Blog. Added, go to My Music to see full list. It does not seek to change itself. What it does is push the empathetic individual to latch on to the most appealing targets that will be the easiest to "fix" when the more painful aspects of the biological capability arise.

This compatibility between empathetic and empathized depends on a variety of factors: In main concerned character Alice's case, we have some special characteristics: When the successful track record runs long enough, it is hard to remember the holes and the luck. In terms of not being like myself, an armchair critic who continues to reside in a well off suburban area, Alice gets full marks.

In terms of her shitting on with one hand and entitling herself with the other to the fruits of capitalism, colonialism, feminism, and any other isms she cannot cure with a batch of soup, Alice is nothing more than a maternal figure with a need for a peculiar breed of urban warfare thrills. Armchair critic I may be, but as a member of a settler state, I am aware of how easily my death among many could appear in a chapter that touched upon "The Driving out of the Invaders of the North Americas" in the longer history of things, if the continent would even still be termed said Eurocentric such.

Unlike Alice, I do not pretend to be entitled to any more death and destruction for "the greater good. Those who see politics as useless, solely the fault of the populace, a mass hallucination of the young, a laughable thought of community in the state of supreme individualism, or solely the act of voting, walk away. Walk away, and only come back when you can tell me why this book is a tragedy, and how it came to be that some forms of slaughtering human beings for nothing are acceptable, and some are not.

View all 18 comments. View all 6 comments. Recommended to Jennifer aka EM by: It's been about 2 weeks now since I've finished The Good Terrorist, and so I'm in that place where I feel most compelled but least capable of writing a review. Since that's never stopped me before, here goes. I must applaud Lessing for her skill at creating characters, Alice in particular, who are utterly annoying, petulant, stupid, dangerously immature, and appallingly destructive.

These characters wrap their fundamental laziness and selfishness in a cloak of ignorant, misguided, sociopathologic It's been about 2 weeks now since I've finished The Good Terrorist, and so I'm in that place where I feel most compelled but least capable of writing a review. These characters wrap their fundamental laziness and selfishness in a cloak of ignorant, misguided, sociopathological ideology, and revel in their victimhood while blaming everyone but themselves for their pathetic lot in life.

If I met these people in real life, my inner school-marm would, I know, come blazing forth and I would give them each a right tongue-lashing, berating them for being the spoilt children they are. Okay, I would probably do that later, in the car on the way home, after I thought of something pithy and eviscerating to say without needing to fear any comeback or comeuppance at the hands of these dangerously half-witted revolutionaries.

My most damning vitriol I would reserve for Alice, who--unlike the others--does NOT lack for redeeming qualities. She will work tremendously hard to make life better for herself and others although her efforts are not the least altruistic or selfless. Alice is clever and spooky-smart about people, capable of seeing through them to their real motivations, and then using that--without compunction--to manipulate them and steal from them. She wields her resourcefulness and acuity as tools to 'beat the system' rather than effect constructive change, and so she lost my sympathy about 35 pages in.

But Lessing has painted such a remarkable portrait, that despite my distaste for each and every one of the characters, I couldn't help but to keep reading. Oh yes, she hooked me, she did. I spent the remainder of the book searching for some way in to Alice's psyche, to understand her and to excuse her abhorrent, ultimately criminal, actions. Lessing provided proof points to discount every possible reason why the year-old Alice, living in a squat with a closeted gay boyfriend who frequently abandons and abuses her, is everybody's doormat.

Mental illness, generational poverty, lack of education, childhood abuse or neglect--none of these likely suspects bore fruit as a logical explanation for Alice's behaviour. So by the end, when Alice's full stupidity and cowardice were revealed--with no reasonable explanation available--I felt both frustrated and horrified. I'm questioning myself because smart people, not the least of whom the author herself, seem to think she was "quite mad" as Lessing says in the The Languages We Use afterword.

I certainly saw emotional volatility, odd outbursts, strange behaviour possibly even delusional , and a definite anti-social inclination without any moral centre.

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But hell, Alice seemed the sanest of the lot! I therefore didn't see mental illness in Alice. And, this is Lessing's major accomplishment: How easily we can overlook or misapprehend the looming dangers all around us? Specifically, how short a distance it is from armchair Communist or any other ideological or religious zealotry and petty thief to cold-blooded terrorist, bomb-maker and killer? Maybe this book was a little ahead of its time, but from the vantage point of , these themes almost seem The greater accomplishment was the extremely compelling dynamic between the unpleasantness of the characters, the stupidity and hypocrisy of their minor acts of vandalism and thievery and their own petty conflicts with each other versus the stumbling but inexorable march, despite being barely capable of getting themselves arrested along the way, to the final, bloody conclusion.

I found the black humour throughout extremely satisfying--visible only now, with some distance and thinking back on what Lessing's true achievement was here. There is not a shred of sympathy for the plight of these characters: Lessing was, in effect, putting her own politics under the magnifying glass. A clever feat, and worthy of a solid 4-stars I'm upping my rating even though, by the end, I still felt a little tricked into having spent so much time with such unpleasant people.

View all 8 comments. Die Gute Terroristin ist kein Oxymoron, sondern die Hausbesetzerin ist wirklich so.

A Thriller

Und was soll das mit dem Upperclass Sprachduktus, den jeder einzelne der Hausbesetzergruppe durch irgendeinen anderen Unterschicht-Dialekt zu kaschieren versucht? Ab der Mitte des Werkes, immer wenn mir die Autorin irgendwas politisches mitteilen will, bin ich beinahe in Narkolepsie gefallen, weil es so platt und schnarchnasig vermittelt wird. Und dann auch noch Literaturnobelpreis? View all 9 comments.

The story moves very slowly, and things really only start to happen in the final act, yet I was never bored by this book. Doris Lessing's writing is like one of the finer social satirists of the 19th or early 20th century, writing about contemporary events, or at least contemporary for the s, when this book was written.

The Good Terrorist is about Alice Mellings, who is, with great and lasting irony, exactly the sort of comfy-making, boo-boo kissing motherly type as her own mother was, even The story moves very slowly, and things really only start to happen in the final act, yet I was never bored by this book. The Good Terrorist is about Alice Mellings, who is, with great and lasting irony, exactly the sort of comfy-making, boo-boo kissing motherly type as her own mother was, even though Alice is now a "revolutionary" who spits on everything her horrible, awful, no-good shitty bourgeois parents stand for, when she isn't begging them for money and stealing from them when they won't give it.

The grown woman of solidly middle-class Brits, Alice was given everything by her parents, including a good university education. But we learn that her fractured relationship with both mother and father who are themselves divorced is at the root of all Alice's discontents. Now her father is remarried and running a business and trying to wash his hands of his problem child of a grown daughter, and her mother has turned into an impoverished alcoholic. Alice's interactions with her parents are painful because it's one of those situations where an outside observer can easily see that if just one of them would bend, just a little bit, they could make peace, but they always manage to say exactly the wrong things to each other, and neither Alice nor her parents ever have the emotional maturity to talk like grown-ups without verbal knives drawn.

When not being reduced to an eternally rebellious teenager in the presence of her parents, Alice is a whirlwind of industriousness and hard work ethic, even though it's all applied to keeping an "approved tenancy" in which she and her fellow communist "revolutionaries" are squatting from being demolished by the council. Her co-revolutionaries are all freeloading under-achievers like Alice, the difference being that she could easily make something of her life, while most of her "comrades" are just plain losers. But amidst all their "organizing" and "protesting" and "sticking it to the fat capitalist pigs," a plan gradually emerges to work with either the IRA or with their revolutionary Russian comrades.

At first this seems like as much a joke as any of their other plans, since Alice is the only one who ever actually does anything, and she's mostly doing housework and den-mothering all these wanker wannabes. What would the IRA or the Soviets want with a bunch of idiots like these? But if you insist on being a useful idiot long enough, someone will use you, and like shadows at the edges of a campfire, the real actors out there begin to come circling.

The Good Terrorist isn't a suspense novel or a spy thriller or a crime caper. It's a character drama, with a bunch of interesting characters who are all much alike except in that they are each individuals with their own problems and quirks, and they're all kind of unlikable idiots, even before they start getting in over their heads with real bad guys. Only Alice is sympathetic, and she's still as much of a fool and a naif as the rest of them, it's just that in her case, we can see all the wasted energy and potential.

Her entire life has been spent in a kind of dreamworld, living for other people, being shaped by other people's opinions of her, and deliberately looking away from ugly reality. She's too good for the people around her, but she also pretty much deserves what she gets. I might have wished there was a bit more action, maybe a twist or two, but The Good Terrorist held my attention and Doris Lessing's writing had no real weakness other than a leisurely in-no-hurry-to-get-anywhere pace.

This wasn't an exciting book and the plot is only there to make the characters do things while we get to know them, but the day-to-day mundanity of the story is deceptive, and if that's all you see, you're missing the point, which is the banality of evil and the obligation of anyone who wants to consider themselves a "good" person to not do nothing when other people are doing things you know are wrong. I'll definitely read more by Lessing; she delivers wonderful characterization with sharp, straight-faced black humor. This book is like a verbal confection of delicate and indelicate interpersonal dialog and nuanced character studies.

With a bomb at the center. I was reading a book back then - a leftover of Black History Month - that I wasn't much enjoying. I quickly set it aside. There is a lot of literature I want to read that is written by women. I picked up Naomi Klein's latest book and read two hundred pages. I wasn't impressed just yet, but I can see it is building towards something.

At least, I think I can see that.

Anyways, this is a review of the book that I picked up after those two hundred, unsatisfying pages, suddenly feeling like I needed to really let my mind settle into fiction again. There is much to be said about this book and its exploration of terrorism in the late twentieth century.

It is a satire, perhaps. Or, perhaps it is more specifically an insulting depiction of radicalism, its disorganization, its dependence upon incomplete, broken humans who desire so much but are convinced that they desire nothing.

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Does this make any sense yet? Doris does it so well though that, all of a sudden, somehow, it does. And it is beautiful. As many reviews have shown, though, the real triumph in this book lies in the characters rather than the plot. And these characters are interesting, tragic figures. Getting along and refusing to get along. Lessing clearly recognized that they needed to be well-developed because, in the end, not much really happens in this book. Lots of small events, sure, but things only really pick up in the last hundred pages.

That doesn't mean the first are bad pages. In fact, I think they are my favourite pages - the last few, while still very good, clearly moved the book in a different direction and, to my mind, the book was weakened somewhat as a result. That said, if the book started in satire, it also ended in satire.

Jane Rogers revisits Doris Lessing | Books | The Guardian

The middle was devoted to the characters. And one character in particular. Alice Mellings, the narrator and protagonist. And the reader vacillates in their judgement of her. Sometimes she is the calm, precise, intelligent, thoughtful figure. The maternal character in the home who is caring for everybody when they need caring and preventing catastrophes when they need to be prevented.

Also the figure who is most frequently overlooked, despite her incredible contributions to the community. Alice is also the character with whom you grow most impatient. She makes silly choices, and abuses the wrong people in her life. She is terribly weak in all the wrong ways. And when she falters she seems to falter in all the wrong moments. And, in the end, you decide she is an unreliable narrator, and you have to wonder if what she has told you is true or just some falsified memory. The thing is, Lessing builds her up to have these flaws right from the get go, but they are dominated, rather than balanced, by the many great things that Alice does for her community.

So you are a bit disappointed in your own judgement of her character when you reach the end.



The frustrating thing was that I understood Alice so well. I related to her perfectly. I saw myself in her, and then momentarily recognized myself in her band of friends. But Alice, above all others in this novel, may be one of the great characters of all the novels I have read. This is my second Lessing novel, but I'll definitely be reading more. A Briefing for a Descent into Hell or Shikasta will be next, and hopefully before the end of the calendar year.

I was impressed by what I saw - a controlled, brilliant mind was at work here. One whose opinions are clear and precise, and whose understanding of humanity is equally refined but entirely conflicted. View all 3 comments. As a lefty and former squatter this book contains dozens of painful home truths familiar to all of us involved in radical politics. The tiny left group removed from reality. The bragging about violence on protests. The lazy 'vanguard thinkers' who let everyone else do the work.

All are present and correct in Lessing's unforgiving assault on a hapless bunch of middle class revolutionaries drifting from squat to squat in an attempt to escape from the real world. Alice, intelligent but consumed by As a lefty and former squatter this book contains dozens of painful home truths familiar to all of us involved in radical politics.

Alice, intelligent but consumed by her hatred of her parents, narrates this tale of pathetic naive idiocy as the band of brave class struggle warriors attempt to form dangerous alliances with the IRA and the Soviet Union. Jasper, Alice's whinging, bullying partner, is one of the most loathsome characters I have ever come across.

The Good Terrorist

Lessing said that if she wrote the book now it would have a religious rather than political dimension. Well, Chris Morris has dutifully produced that film already, with his Four Lions, which depicts the doomed efforts of a group of British Jihadists. My one complaint - this book is so consumed with its attack that it forgets to depict any positive aspects to progressive politics - there are no sympathetic characters, no-one working for real change, which as we know, so many genuinely want to fight for. Dec 02, Naomi Foyle rated it it was amazing.

I found the staccato, pile-up syntax grating at first, but by the end of the book I was engrossed. I found her emotional displacement far more tragic and realistic than any psychological breakdown or guilt-ridden revelation on her part would have been. In a sense a disquisition on social and political violence, the book prises open a jarring complex of abusive behaviours - state violence, childhood trauma, emotional blackmail, terrorist atrocity - and tracks their mutual dependence.

Episode 1 of 2 A band of inept revolutionaries in a London squat are trying to court the IRA while Alice is homemaking. Episode 2 of 2 Faye is found bleeding after a suicide attempt, but Alice has promised not to involve the authorities. Mar 07, Ghaida. Mar 20, Cwinters02 added it Recommends it for: I hated this damn book. I was forced to read it for class, and now I have to write a fucking page paper on it by Wednesday. Every page was torturous to read.

Nothing happened until the very end, and even that sucked. I recommend that you never read this book. There was not one character or plot line worth investing a second of your life on. The plot sounds interesting, but the language could be difficult.