The Cleft

‘Lessing skilfully manipulates multiple perspectives...a bold, inventive and challenging book from a writer who continues to enlighten and astonish as she approaches her tenth decade.’ The Independent

‘The author's reach continues to thrill...there's witchery in the Old She yet.’ Daily Telegraph

‘a strange novel, one of her strangest, but it lures one ineluctably into its toils...Lessing has a lot of fun in her prehistoric world...the novel is best seen as pure entertainment: an amusing series of what-ifs by one of the world's great storytellers.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A narrative with the compelling stamp of Lessing's late tales.’ The Times

‘Lessing's considerable talent...her certainties are persuasive.’ Sunday Times

‘Doris Lessing writes movingly of the human desire for change...she conveys a powerful belief in the impermanence of any stuation in which human beings find themselves and the paradoxically unchanging nature of human relations.’ The Observer

‘Lessing's engaging tale is told with the simplicity of an aural history committed to memory.’ New Statesman

‘Her prose is pleasingly incantatory...the novel has a pleasing gravitational pull on a purely poetic level.’ Metro

‘Lessing writes, as ever, with such calm and assured authority...a fascinating, at times disturbing book; one can't imagine any other writer bringing it off.’ The Scotsman