The Cleft by Doris Lessing

The Cleft Reviews

• 
  Emily B

  I didn’t particularly like the format of this book. The first 30 pages or so were the most interesting and the rest hardly added anything.
• 
  Carolina

  
  Now! What is it about all these terrible ratings? Accusations of sexism? Of the text lacking quality/being boring? I can identify so little with previous reviews of this work that I made it a point to write a review for this one.
  
  I had never read Lessing before and when I read the synopsis for this one I knew that it was just meant to be. It is definitely not what I had expected – I had hoped it would be a cleverer version of Herland, maybe. It does share certain similarities with Gilman’s separatist female utopia, such as the usage of type characters instead of actual people, which further identifies both works as fables of humanity. However, The Cleft is very little like Herland as in it does not focus on the ‘before men’ but instead on the ‘after’; and there is close to none utopic elements in this scenario.
  
  The premise is simple: women came first. Then one day, a boy was born. They think the child’s defective, but then ‘monsters’ keep being born, until the baby boys start being rescued by eagles and form a community of their own on the other side of the mountain. The most interesting moment in the text is precisely the beginning, gruesome and intriguing, indicating both genders as criminals against one another. From there, the story assumes the shape of a quasi-parody of traits generally attributed to males and females. Meanwhile, to further complicate matters, the narrative is put together by a Roman senator-wannabe who remarks on the earlier civilization and compares it to his own.
  
  This book is clearly not preaching anything about human evolution; instead, its objective is to give us food for thought in what concerns the often troublesome relations between genders. Read it if you do not want to take for granted the patterns of those relations. ‘Cleft’ or ‘squirt’: the only thing clear is that there can’t be one without the other.
  
• 
  Wreade1872

  Lessing is a class-A writer which is the only reason this isn't an even lower score. The main issue is simply that this is a history not a story and historie real or feigned are just never that exciting.
  
  This one is told from the point of view of an ancient roman scholar putting together a forbidden history from various fragments. The main conceit being that this version of mythology/history claims that women where the first sex and males where some later after thought.
  
  This conceit doesn't really mean much once you get past the 50% mark. Also now that i think about it the roman frame story also doesn't go anywhere.
  
  So all you have is a fairly dull faux history of civilization only alleviated by the strenght of the writing and some interesting questions raised about the battle of the sexes. But not enough.
  
  Interestingly it felt a bit misogynistic to me. Because of the way the tale unfolds the females just never do anything before the males came along leaving a weird implication that female life is nothing without men. Not the intent i would assume.
  There's also things like the fact the men are bad at keeping their huts clean, which is supposed to be an insult to the male i assume but accidently ends up implying that females are genetically engineered to be cleaners, which strikes the ear as bit 50's :lol .
  
  Anyway, even though this one is short it certainly runs out of steam by halfway.
  
  Edit: I should mention there's some really dark stuff near the start of the novel this isn't repeated at all later though. Also there's a Giant Eagle obscession which sort of makes sense since hte hstorian is roman but its still gets really stupid. Especially at some point when a bit is called The Coming of the Eagles... :lol way too close to The Eagles are Coming from Lord of the Rings :D .
• 
  Katia Petsali

  Χρόνια τώρα αναρωτιέμαι ποιός ψυχαναγκασμός μου επιβάλλει να τελειώνω οποιοδήποτε βιβλίο ξεκινάω, ΑΚΟΜΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΝ ΑΥΤΟ ΤΟ ΒΙΒΛΙΟ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΑΠΙΣΤΕΥΤΑ ΒΑΡΕΤΟ, σε κάνει να νιώθεις ότι σπαταλάς τον χρόνο σου ενώ εκεί έξω υπάρχουν τόσα άλλα βιβλία που αξίζουν την προσοχή σου. Να είναι η διαστροφικά ηδονική στιγμή που διαγράφεις ένα ακόμα βιβλία από την αιωνίως επεκτεινόμενη λίστα των waiting patiently to be read;;; Το ότι πατάς το I've finished this book! και σε κατακλύζει ένα αίσθημα υπερηφάνειας;;; Η σχισμή ήταν τόσο κακή που δεν ευχαριστήθηκα τίποτα από τα παραπάνω. Δεν είναι μόνο ότι στο βιβλίο αυτό διαδέχονται η μια την άλλη ιδέες ανερμάτιστες -ακόμα και στα όρια του μισογυνισμού;;- είναι ότι δεν έχει να προσφέρει κυριολεκτικά τίποτα στον αναγνώστη--> δεν είναι ιστορικό βιβλίο, δεν στηρίζεται σε γεγονότα ώστε να μπορείς να στηρίξεις τα όσα αφηγείται, δεν έχει κεντρικούς ήρωες, δεν υπάρχει περιθώριο ταύτισης/αποστροφής...ΔΕΝ ΞΕΡΩ ΤΙ ΝΑ ΠΩ. Υπάρχει κάποιος που το έχει διαβάσει και αποκόμισε κάτι διαφορετικό;
• 
  Katya

  [DNF]
  
  "A Fenda é aquele rochedo ali adiante, que não é a entrada para uma gruta, não tem saída, e é a coisa mais importante das nossas vidas. Foi sempre assim. Nós somos A Fenda, A Fenda somos nós."
  
  Não percebo qual a intenção de Lessing com a publicação de A Fenda.
  De uma forma geral, trata-se de uma (muito possível) narrativa da criação partindo de um pressuposto de partenogénese (e se, para vários milhões de pessoas a primeira mulher ainda nasceu das costelas de um homem, não há nada que aponte para o facto da partenogénese, verificando-se em vários outros animais, ser impossível nos humanos!) graças à qual a humanidade começou por ser exclusivamente feminina durante um largo período de tempo até ao aparecimento do primeiro ser de sexo masculino (alas!).
  
  E embora esta ideia de base seja interessante, Lessing escolhe como narrador um homem e um romano, o que, desde logo, deitou a perder qualquer sensação de verosimilhança que pudesse nascer da relação narrador/personagens. A sociedade romana, assumidamente patriarcal, seria a última a dar berço a um intelectual feminista que parece encontrar na história das Fendas (as primeiras mulheres) paralelos com a sua vida pessoal!
  
  Além disso, para este tipo de narrativa, a autora subverte algumas práticas ritualísticas e abusivas perpetradas contra as mulheres ao longo dos tempos, fazendo delas o agressor em vez de a vítima e parecendo com isto querer defender que essas mesmas práticas, ocorreram e ocorrem, tendo por base a curiosidade e o medo, e não a barbárie - alguns exemplos que se sucedem no livro: mutilação genital; abuso físico, psicológico e sexual.
  
  Entendo a ideia de converter papéis masculinos em papéis femininos e vice versa, mas para isso seria necessário levar até ao fim as suas consequências - o que não acontece. Os homens continuam a ser retratados como sendo ativos, caçadores, exploradores; as mulheres preguiçosas, coletoras e assustadiças. A própria natureza dá-se a mostrar de duas formas distintas para cada género: para as mulheres é sol, verdura e mar; para os homens é paisagem rochosa e inóspita, e animais selvagens. E então, a dado ponto, e apesar de poderem jogar com a sua primazia, as mulheres baixam os braços e a história repete-se, como se instintivamente fossem aptas a servir e os homens a ser servidos. Ou seja, as Fendas acabam pintadas como agressoras acidentais e mais tarde como escravas inevitáveis. Lessing assume que, uma vez efetuada a troca de papéis e dado às mulheres o protagonismo na narrativa histórica, estas se comportariam exatamente da mesma forma que os homens o fazem e, mais tarde, por uma imposição quase genética, se resignariam a um lugar de submissas de forma voluntária - afirmação altamente misógina que não é fácil de digerir.
  
  Além disso, toda esta ideia de crueldade de antigo testamento sempre me soou pouco credível para o começo dos tempos: se todos empunhássemos mocas e andássemos atrás dos vizinhos com elas, quantos sobreviveriam para perpétuar a espécie? É-nos fácil, a toda esta distância, julgar que somos sumamente civilizados quando antes eram todos bárbaros... Eu tenho sérias dúvidas quanto a isso.
  
  Voltando ao início: a ideia de fundo para este livro é interessante - não inédita, mas interessante - e a simbologia inerente está muito bem pensada. É a sua execução que falha, na minha opinião. Não é um lugar confortável aquele em que a escritora se coloca (independentemente da sua própria opinião!) e com isso deixa os leitores face a uma escolha difícil: aceitar esta ideia ou rebelar-se contra ela.
  
  Fiquei sinceramente triste com esta obra de Lessing pois não só me é absolutamente repulsiva como a não sei qualificar ou às suas motivações. Assim, correndo o risco de ser injusta, afirmo que esta é uma das poucas vezes em que uma grande escritora (e uma mulher que admiro) me deixa francamente decepcionada e sem vontade de mais. Acho que Lessing contava com estas reações mas, como em tudo o mais na sua vida, não estava minimamente preocupada com elas. E essa liberdade de ação é a única parte boa deste livro.
  
  "Sempre achei curioso o facto de as mulheres serem veneradas como deusas, enquanto na vida quotidiana são remetidas para um papel secundário e consideradas inferiores."
• 
  Cheyenne Blue

  To the Nobel Prize for Literature committee of 2007: what were you smoking?
  
  I read “The Cleft” on a flight from Sydney to San Francisco. One hour into the flight, we encountered turbulence and it didn’t abate for the next couple of hours. The movie (singular, because this was a United-breaks-guitars flight) was crap. I was trapped in my seat by the fasten seatbelts sign, and in any case even the flight crew had hit the deck in crouched position. I was 70 pages into “The Cleft” when the turbulence started, long enough to know I wasn’t really enjoying it, but by then I was confined with nothing else to read as my other books were in the overhead locker. That is the ONLY reason I finished it. The only remotely positive thing was that there had been two drinks services before turbulence grounded the flight crew.
  
  What did I hate about this? It’s tempting to say “everything” and move on to something more interesting, but in no particular order, I loathed:
  - The repetition. Yeah, Doris, we get it. If you said once, you said a gazillion times that when the clefts and the squirts started copulating the babies were different. How many times do we have to read about the clefts going over the mountain to the squirts? It was slow and dull.
  - The story (or lack thereof). Slow? It was glacial. See point 1 – repetition.
  - I was very discomforted by the gender stereotyping. Clefts are fat and lazy and unadventurous (they don’t even climb the nearest hill to see what’s on the other side) and lie around on the rocks sunning themselves. Clefts look after babies. Clefts instinctively know how to make a broom and clean up after the squirts. Clefts have language skills but are useless in other ways. Clefts are there to be raped. Squirts are brave and daring and utter slobs. Lucky the clefts came along and invented the broom, eh, or else they’d be buried in the litter of half chewed animal bones. Squirts rape clefts. Squirts can’t control their sexual urges. Squirts communicate in grunts.
  - Did I mention that squirts rape clefts?
  - And then once the clefts are pregnant the squirts kick them out. Oh yeah, there’s a lot to love about this portrayal of gender.
  - Come to that, if we have a society of men and a society of women, where’s the gay and lesbian love? Huh? Huh?
  
  I hated this book. And I hate United-breaks-guitars and the weather over the Pacific for making me read it.
  
• 
  Seth T.

  I did not finish this book. In fact I could not. It was my taste as a consumer of books that prohibited me.
  
  Oh sure, I've set aside books before. I've even set aside books with no intention of continuing them in the future. But never with as adamant a certainty that I would never again pick up the book in order to give it a second chance.
  
  Some may question my ability to judge a book based only on a partial reading, which is fair, but trust me: this book is Bad.
  
  Doris Lessing's The Cleft may actually be the worst book I'd ever read. It's not so much that the ideas expressed were repugnant or in any way offensive, but more that in the place of what we commonly refer to as writing there was instead a collection of hieroglyphic fecal matter.
  
  I had never read any of Lessing's impressive oeuvre and so to encounter this as my first taste of what by at least some accounts is a smorgasbord of delicacies was, in layman's terms, a disappointment. Pacing: scattered by what looks to be the onset of senility. Style: fourth-grade chic. Historical sense: senseless and ahistorical. Characters: there were none and those impressions that threatened to become characters were never better than those cardboard standees you used to find in display windows at Suncoast Video, a Leia or Chewbacca or Boba Fett (of course, none of those impressions ever really approached that sense of solidity that those corrugated paper mementos had).
  
  This book was chosen for our bookclub on the basis that mere months prior its publication, Lessing won the Nobel for literature and the synopsis made it sound like an adventurous read into gender studies. It was not anything of the sort.
  
  Here we see the woman who chose the book express her disappointment in Lessing and in the Nobel committee
  by means of willful conflagration.
• 
  Eileen

  A Review…and a Few Questions
  
  In June, 1992, Doris Lessing wrote an Op-ed for the NY Times entitled, “Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer.” The questions that Lessing especially does not want to hear are, “What is the story really about? What does it mean?” In other words, we must take her stories at face value and see them as just that – works of her imagination, nothing more.
  
  After finishing “The Cleft,” however, it seems impossible not to ask those questions. On the surface, Lessing’s latest thought-provoking novel is a simple tale, told by a Roman historian during the height of the Roman Empire. The historian, a male, recounts the “origin of the species” found in ancient written records. These scrolls are based on an oral tradition handed down through the ages.
  
  In her brief preface, Lessing says that the whole story began with a question, “sparked” by a scientific article, stoked by the imagination. The question: What if the first “human” were a woman, not a man? Suppose our ancestors were females, Clefts, born in the sea, inseminated and nurtured by it. The early Clefts resemble seals, lolling around the shore, on rocks, living in peace until one gives birth to a male, or “monster.”
  
  The fascinating narrative shifts between the myth, or legend, of the Clefts and the Monsters, and the historian’s description of life in ancient Rome. He dwells on gender and family issues in both time frames and invokes more questions. Are females inherently strong, maternal care-givers? Are males basically competitive, irresponsible dreamers?
  
  One of the main themes of The Cleft is that history is by nature subjective. It all depends on who is writing the history books. On page 136, the historian says:
  
  “A community, a people, must decide what sort of a chronicle must be kept. We all know that in the telling and retelling of an event, or series of events, there will be as many accounts as there are tellers.”
  
  Lessing’s historian clings to the “oral tradition,” passed down through memories, as most reliable. Yet, he admits (p. 25), “What I am about to relate may be – must be – speculative.” Much of the “factual” material is “kept locked up.” Our narrator laments, “all this locking up and smoothing over and the suppression of the truth.” Which explains that by the time of ancient Rome, it was already “common knowledge” that the males came first.
  
  So, here is my question, not for Lessing, rather for her readers, for myself. Why Rome? Why is the fable of the Clefts and the Monsters set against the backdrop of the Roman Empire in all its glory? Couldn’t the scrolls have been discovered by a 21st century historian? Why is the story told by a man who despises the coliseum and its gory, violent rites, yet who admits to a voyeuristic, visceral thrill each time he attends? What is the significance of the Eagle, present in the ancient myth of the Clefts as protector of the males, as well as a revered species of Rome?
  
  Perhaps the answer can be found on page 216, in a passage replete with the historian’s own questions regarding the empire’s expansion and his personal loss of two sons to war:
  
  “I…think of how Rome has hurt itself in our need to expand, to have. I think of my two poor sons, lying somewhere in those northern forests. Rome has to outleap itself, has to grow, has to reach out…Why should there ever be an end to us, to Rome, to our boundaries? Subject peoples may fight us, but they never can stop us. I sometimes imagine how all the known world will be Roman, subject to our beneficent rule, to Roman peace, Roman laws and justice, Roman efficiency…Some greater power than human guides us, leads us, points where our legions must go next. And if there are those who criticize us, then I have only one reply. Why, then, if we lack the qualities needed to make the whole earth flourish, why does everyone want to be a Roman citizen?”
  
  Why Rome, indeed? Lessing has said that if she wants to write about a subject or situation, she does just that. Still, there’s a question I’d love to ask her.
  
• 
  Betsy

  I expected to whip through this book but found that I needed to read it a little slower to absorb what the author was trying to convey. I almost didn’t finish it. Around page 160, I was completely frustrated on how the book was written and decided to read some reviews to help clarify what the author was trying to do. Well, I’m glad I did! It changed my whole attitude. After one review, I realized how brilliant the author was by how realistically portraying how a Roman would have told his story. Apparently, histories written in Roman times had “characteristics of abstractness, representative characters, and large amounts of speculation” which were quite typical of the kinds of histories they wrote. Roman histories are also known to have abrupt endings according to one review, although I didn’t really get that feeling of ending abruptly.
  
  The storyline was a unique thought on how humanity began. I really enjoyed the author's concept.
• 
  Genevieve

  An interesting alternative view to evolution, but at its heart it was "Men are From Mars Women are from Venus" meets "The Lord of the Flies". A quick read that seems to drive home the differences between the sexes, sometimes annoyingly so. I enjoyed the narrator's viewpoint as a male in the Roman society illustrating, in a much less hit-you-upside-the-head style, that the differences remain. And of course as a modern reader it causes one to consider that if not much changed between Paleolithic and Roman times, has there been much change up to our current state of being? Not one to buy into gender stereotypes easily or willingly, I found it a bit grating at times but still thought is brought up points for consideration and discussion.
• 
  Laura Vaughan

  What some people have found disturbing and difficult to read, I have found interesting and engaging. Lessing's The Cleft offers the reader an almost non-fiction account of an alternative creation story.
  Some reviewers on here have argued against lack of characters or direction, but that is precisely the point. It is meant to be read as an historical account. It is the narrator's story (a Roman historian) that becomes the fictionalised character - and whilst I don't find him that interesting, he offers Lessing the means to tell the tale.
  The tale itself, therefore, is punctuated by the historians ido- and sociolect and allows the information to be accessed as a potential realistic account.
  I found the content really thought provoking and the characters that were present, substantial for the genre that Lessing is trying to achieve.
  What is meant to be a 'different' piece of writing truly does achieve that, both through its content and stylistically.
• 
  Lygeri

  Η ευφυής, παραμυθολογική, δοσμένη απλοϊκά ανάλυση της εξαιρετικής Doris Lessing για τον πόλεμο των φύλων.
• 
  Dave-O

  Lessing's novel proposes a new creation myth, one of a first race of females, the "Clefts", that give birth to males, "Monsters" (later, "Squirts"). That THE CLEFT is both a clever satire of gender roles as well as a thoroughly entertaining book is because of Lessing's talent for humanizing shards of a fictional myth. She does this vis-a-vis an elderly Roman historian who is writing his account of the history of the Clefts. This makes for an interesting, if at times fractured, framing device for the narrative that makes the social satire more layered.
  
  As with any myth, there is violence and magic. The sea from which the Clefts emerge, gives them strength as well as fertility. Magnificent eagles swoop in to save the baby males from death and later, female deer allow them to suckle them in absence of mothers. The discovery of the males by the females and the subsequent mating and fighting is the best part of the story. As the story shifts to a second myth, the world becomes less magic and the two tribes are forced together over time.
  
  The first part seems more focused on the females' trauma of male discovery while the second, more on the males' yearning to explore new lands. I found them to read exactly as Lessing intends: as an ancient historian's interpretation of authentic ancient texts, which was more humorous and just as insightful as I anticipated.
• 
  Amy

  The author takes infanticide, incest, genital mutilation, murder, and rape as a matter-of-fact instinctual course of humanity. I'm sorry, but I just can't continue reading this drivel. Call me a prude if you must. When I saw a picture of a 90-year-old author on the back cover of a nobel-prize-winning novel, I certainly didn't expect such a trashy novel. There is no reason that pre-history novels have to assume that humans started out on this awful course. I like the author's writing style and the premise of her novel is interesting (what if the first humans were asexual females and suddenly started giving birth to male babies). However, her justifications and smoothings over of the gross crimes in this novel aren't enough to make me want to continue to fill my mind with them.
• 
  Leslie

  I think it was the idea of the book that kept me reading it....I was spurred on by my own curiosity about the premise more than the actual story that was told.
• 
  Basma B-Ahmed

  nothing in this book is like i expected
  it's not connected, not interesting and definitely not convincing enough.
  the only thing i liked about this book is that she called boys stupid multiple times.
• 
  Carla Soares

  3,5*
  
  Li a autora há vários anos e retive a impressão de uma escrita excelente, mas temáticas muitos negras, por isso dei início a esta leitura com alguma relutância, e ao mesmo curiosidade: Lessing tem um Nobel (não são assim tantas as escritoras que obtiveram um), mas não estava certa do que esperar.
  
  Acabo a leitura sem saber ao certo como defini-la.... trata-se quase uma lenda, contada como uma narrativa de um historiador romano, com base na análise de relatos imaginários, supostamente integrados na tradição oral do início dos tempos. Ao mesmo tempo, contém elementos reconhecidos da evolução do Homem no início da sua vida na terra e da forma como poderá ter-se disseminado na terra. O Homem, ou alguns Homens. A Fenda que dá nome ao livro refere-se à mulher - e sim, a fenda é a vagina - mas é também um espaço físico, nas grutas que habita, que a Mulher identifica consigo. Está muito bem escrito, tem um certo humor, é cru, às vezes quase cruel, interessante enquanto lenda. É, todavia, um tanto repetitivo - o que cansa, ainda que possa ser propositado, para refletir a tradição oral. Posso dizer, porém, que regressei ao livro sempre com vontade e a leitura foi, na globalidade, um prazer.
• 
  Olethros

  -Otra visión más de la famosa autora sobre la guerra de sexos.-
  
  Género. Novela.
  
  Lo que nos cuenta. Un noble romano disfruta contemplando las diferentes formas de relación entre hombres y mujeres de distintas edades y condiciones, incluyo las suyas propias, mientras como historiador valora los contenidos y la interpretación de un antiguo volumen que contiene la transcripción de mitos orales muy viejos que a su vez se remontan a épocas todavía más anteriores, que sin ser los documentos más primitivos que obran en poder de los historiadores romanos sí que son llamativos para ellos por su visión ginocentrista de los orígenes de la humanidad.
  
  ¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
  
  
  http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
• 
  Alice

  I suppose this book earns it's one star by being the straw that broke this 'always finish a novel no matter how good it is' camel's back...
  
  About 80 pages from the end and I just cannot. Repetitious, slow (& I have a particularly high tolerance for the meandering novel) and oh my god the painfully binary gender generalisations. Lots to say about them but other reviewers have already been there, one thing to point out - exclusively male and exclusively female civilisations pre any kind of moralising/social judgement and NO gay sex? Not even a little? Really?! As Lessing happily lingers on the rape, genital mutilation etc that arises when these communities meet this can't be put down to prudishness - it's plain weird.
• 
  ambyr

  An exercise in unreliable narration that fails to rise above the fundamental flaw of being remarkably dull.
• 
  Sammy

  Well that was certainly unique. That's probably about the nicest thing I can say about this book. This was my first foray into the writings of Doris Lessing, who I can see has a brilliant skill worthy of all the recognition she's received, so I don't know if this is a typical Lessing book or something completely different.
  
  For me the book was just too hard to follow. I didn't find any connective thread linking everything together, no story arc, no real central conflict, no climax, no central characters. The idea behind the book had a lot of potential, but the execution fell flat.
  
  Supposedly it's the retelling of an oral history and that's just the way it comes across. Nothing is clear; people, places, actions. Rather than enhancing the idea of this history, it actually takes away its power and confuses the reader.
  
  In the end I don't know really what to say about this book. The book is frustrating in all it's beauty and potential so you feel that you can't fully hate it, but there's so much missing it seems that love and praise are not well-earned. My review is very reflective of the book: confusing, meandering and long-winded. I'm going to stop before I frustrate us all even further.
• 
  Tove R.

  It‘s hard to review this book. It has a low score on GR. I understand that. This is an alternative history of Romans. It‘s about an ancient female cult, The Cleft. A society without men. Then the first son is born... Quick read. I am certain there are many people out there enjoying this book. 3- stars
• 
  Daniel Polansky

  A disgraced Roman Senator, working from lost primary documents, retells the origin of the human species as being one of lust and warfare between men and woman, then (and still, the joke runs) foreign tribes. Basically the idea is to replaced Eden with a recapitulation of the youthful sexual explorations of boys and girls. The idea is clever, and Lessing is absolutely savagely mean about it – this is the kind of book which doesn’t hew to any kind of political program, and about which devotees of any school of gender philosophy will find plenty to be annoyed about. The framing story doesn’t really work, and it goes on a lot longer than it should, but still I found the underlying idea to be so potent that it made up for its narrative missteps. This is my second Lessing book and I’m really enjoying here so far; as indisputable original.
• 
  Krystelle Fitzpatrick

  For such a revered writer as Lessing, it feels almost sacrilegious for me to say, but say it I must- meh. This book is devoid of character, soul, and- one could argue, in good faith- plot. The premise is an interesting one, if not rather gynocentric and derivative of works that came before it. The ideas propounded have roots in reality regarding societal structure, but this book feels so criminally arbitrary that I simply lost the meaning.
  
  There’s no nuance left in this story, and when we were reduced to discussions of the mechanics of peeing for about two pages, and the superiority of who has a better peeing system, I about lost it. There are plenty of books that do this and do it better, and plenty of books far more inclusive and less centered on genitalia determining life choices. Not worth the space it was taking up on the bookshelf, to be quite honest.
  
• 
  Lydia Thomas

  The premise of the book is based on scientific research found by Lessing that as a species, women existed before men. Whatever my personal views on the matter, I thought it would be an interesting premise for a work of fiction, and so I picked it up.
  
  The story is told from the perspective of a Roman senator during Nero’s time, and it reads like a history lecture, with the professor stopping intermittently to relate history to today’s events. (There is nothing new under the sun). I didn’t find the narrative or the characters particularly compelling, but I was very interested in Lessing’s portrayal of gender roles.
  
  A quote from Robert Graves at the beginning of the book really sums it up: “Man does, woman is.”
  
  First of all, although she is often labeled as such because of works like The Golden Notebook (which does address second-wave feminism), I am not aware of Doris Lessing ever claiming to be a feminist. Anyone coming into The Cleft with expectations of feminist conclusions are sure to be sorely disappointed.
  
  While Lessing did turn the concept of woman being other on its head in The Cleft, she resorted to gender stereotypes and even relational stereotypes throughout, which took away from what could have been a powerful comment on gender.
  
  When the first male is born, the women (Clefts) are terrified of this thing that came from them, but is different from them. They label him a Monster, mutilate him (I’ll leave the details of that to your imagination), and leave him out on a rock to die. As more boys are born and left on what comes to be known as the Killing Rock, eagles from the mountains carry them away to a valley, where they are nurtured by wild animals instead of mothers.
  
  Eventually, a younger generation of women follow the eagles over the mountain and see that the boys (now men) have created a society of their own, and this is where the trouble begins. As they begin mating with the men, the women lose their ability to conceive independently.
  
  Now, they need the men. And the men, they don’t like to be needed. There is nagging from the women, and resistance from the men, either because they are not thinking things through or because they’re just being stubborn and not admitting the women are right. (I swear, there is even this part where the men are lost on an expedition, and the few women who came with them are always the ones getting them back on track).
  
  Eventually, the women and men come to terms with each other, but not before the men accidentally destroy the women’s longtime home, the Cleft.
  
  First of all, I don’t think this book is fair to women. Whether you are a creationist or evolutionist or somewhere in between, to think that there was ever a point in history where all women did was sit around and have babies is decidedly misogynistic. Not that there’s anything wrong with having babies, but that’s not the point of a woman’s existence, and this book seems to propagate that to a degree. Besides all of this, women are portrayed as users, depending on men only for babies.
  
  Which brings me to my second point: this book isn’t fair to men, either. That men are thoughtless by nature is an idea hammered into this story from the start. After all, they do, not think. If their obligations to women didn’t hold them back, they would play and adventure and definitely not think all of the time. Men are considered utilitarian, a means to an end: babies. If they couldn’t “fill wombs” as the Clefts put it, they would have no use.
  
  By nature, it seems Lessing is saying, women will always hold men back, and men will always hold women back. And nothing can be done about it, because we’re all codependent (since we need babies, which is another subject for another day). Perhaps if we had continued to exist independently (darn those curious girls), things would be differently.
  
  Personally, I think Lessing’s take on gender roles is cynical. I like to think of women and men as interdependent – that on an individual level we all bring something to the table that others can benefit from, and that extends far beyond procreation.
  
  Then again, I’m an optimist.