The Sweetest Dream - Paperback

by Doris Lessing (Author)

"[Lessing] is a pro, writing at the top of her powers, realistically, passionately, accessibly.... a stirring novel"--San Francisco Chronicle

Frances Lennox stands at her stove, bringing another feast to readiness before ladling it out to the youthful crew assembled around her hospitable table--her two sons and their friends, girlfriends, ex-friends and new friends fresh off the street. It's London in the 1960s and everything is being challenged and changed.

But what is being tolerated? Comrade Johnny delivers political tirades, then laps up the adolescent adulation before disappearing into the night to evade the clutches of his responsibilities. Johnny's mother funds all but finds she can embrace only one lost little girl--Sylvia, who leaves for a South African village dying of AIDS.

These are the people dreaming the Sixties into being and who, on the morning after, woke to find they were the ones taxed with cleaning up and making good.

Back Jacket

Frances Lennox ladles out dinner every night to the motley, exuberant, youthful crew assembled around her hospitable tableher two sons and their friends, girlfriends, ex-friends, and ftesh-off-the-street friends. It's the early 1960s and certainly "everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." Except financial circumstances demand that Frances and her sons Eve with her proper ex-mother-in-law. And her ex-husband, Comrade Johnny, has just dumped his second wife's problem child at Frances's feet. And the world's political landscape has suddenly become surreal beyond imagination....

Set against the backdrop of the decade that changed the world forever, The Sweetest Dream is a riveting look at a group of people who dared to dream-and faced the inevitable cleanup afterward -- from one of the greatest writers of our time.