Complex character creation, spell-binding plot-spinning, delicate character interplay, bright dialogue—none of these has been regarded as Mrs. Lessing's forte in earlier novels, and Memoirs of a Survivor, alas, is no exception. In those earlier writings, her choice of fiction as a vehicle for her ideas seemed almost accidental and perhaps irrelevant. Her weaknesses as a novelist were beside the point since, despite them, she was an intellectually stimulating, philosophically provocative social commentator. In Memoirs of a Survivor, however, her indifference to the demands of fiction becomes both obvious and oppressive. Although Mrs. Lessing follows the same patterns she has traced before, the result here is nightmare rather than revelation. And the principal trouble with nightmares is that their terror and meaning, so real to the dreamer, diminish to the vanishing point in the telling.

Rene Kuhn Bryant, "Mrs. Lessing's Vanishing Point," in National Review (© National Review, Inc...