SOURCE: "London Calling," in Maclean's, Vol. 106, No. 34, August 24, 1992, p. 62.

In the following positive review of The Real Thing, Bemrose singles out "The Pit" as "the collection's finest story."

In 1777, the English writer and wit Samuel Johnson remarked, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." By that standard, British novelist Doris Lessing, 72, has a good deal of vitality left. She first arrived in London in 1949, a young, unpublished novelist from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) intent on winning her literary spurs in the imperial capital. More than 40 years and almost 40 books later, she still makes London her home. The city appears in the background of many of her works, including her ground-breaking 1962 novel about the lives of women, The Golden Notebook. But only in her latest collection of short stories and sketches, The Real Thing, does her beloved adopted home seem like a character in its...