ewee (13/26): The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the snow dog by Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing is one of those writers I'd always meant to read. This was not necessarily the best place to start.

Don't get me wrong, she might be one of the greatest living writers (as the book jacket claims), but this is a sequel and not necessarily one of her major works.

After finishing the book, I have to admit that I was left with a foggy sense that I'd missed something. That the book I read was somehow just the surface of the story she was telling. I suspect that this is true. There's a story inside the story, about the environment, about the human cost of war, about love, about grief, about the loss of knowledge. I'm just not entirely clear what it is.

And overall, her writing was smooth and seamless, knitting together this dreamlike story of wars and environmental decay. Her characters were all oddities in one way or another. And they seemed to inhabit their own worlds, touching tangentially on each others' lives.

But honestly, I got the book because of the cover, and because I was curious to read some of her work. Since my take on it is so foggy, I've linked to as many reviews as possible. Not a bad read, but get it from the library, or borrow my copy.