The Summer Before the Dark

About this book

As the summer begins Kate Brown -- attractive intelligent forty five happily enough married with a house in the London suburbs and three grown children -- has no reason to expect anything will change. But when the summer ends the woman she was -- living behind a protective camouflage of feminine charm and caring -- no longer exists. This novel. Doris Lessings brilliant excursion into the terrifying stretch of time between youth and old age is her journey: from London to Turkey to Spain from husband to lover to madness: on the road to a frightening new independence and a confrontation with self that lets her finally come truly of age.