The Diaries of Jane Somers-简·萨默斯日记

作者：Doris Lessing

书名：The Diaries of Jane Somers《简·萨默斯日记》

中文简介：简·萨默斯是一位精神独立的中年女性，拥有令人艳羡的时尚杂志工作以及上流社会的社交圈。简在失去丈夫和母亲之后，对原本的情感和生活状态产生了质疑与思考。一次偶然的机会，简结识了老人莫迪， 两位女性之间产生了非同寻常的友谊和改变彼此人生态度的关系。

本书探讨了传统女性的处境、新时代独立女性的特质和女性气质的回归、老年人生存空间等问题。这一篇篇看似是主人公简内心独白的日记不仅仅是简自我发现的旅程，也可以看作是莱辛自我发现的新探索。

英文简介：First published by Michael Joseph in 1984, under a pseudonym, as 'The Diary of a Good Neighbour' and 'If the Old Could!', now published as 'The Diaries of Jane Somers', this is in many ways classic Lessing. As resonant with social and political themes as 'The Golden Notebook', Lessing returns to the realism of her early fiction with the wisdom and experience of maturity. The diaries introduce us to Jane, an intelligent and beautiful magazine editor concerned with success, clothes and comfort. But her real inadequacy is highlighted when first her husband, then her mother, die from cancer and Jane feels strangely removed. In an attempt to fill this void, she befriends ninety-something Maudie, whose poverty and squalor contrast so radically with the glamour and luxury of the magazine world. The two gradually come to depend on each other -- Maudie delighting Jane with tales of London in the 1920s and Jane trying to care for the rapidly deteriorating old woman. 'The Diary of Jane Somers' contrasts the helplessness of the elderly with that of the young as Jane is forced to care for her nineteen-year-old drop-out niece Kate who is struggling with an emotional breakdown. Jane realises that she understands young people as little as she so recently did the old.