Doris Lessing - The Grass is Singing

Doris Lessing The Grass is singing
He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white south Africa which is ‘thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the nigger will see he is as good as you are’.
The story is set in Rhodesia in the early 1900’s. Mary lives in the town and has a busy social life with her friends who are mainly married couples. she is 30, got a good job, and happy with her life not being married. But one day she overhears people she thought were her friends talking about her being a spinster and how nobody would have her as a wife. This bothers Mary and when Dick Turner a white farmer, takes her out to the cinema, she decides that she will marry him. Dick however is not a rich farmer he grows crops on his farm not tobacco as the other farmers do. Mary becomes trapped by the poverty and loneliness. She doesn’t know how to talk or handle the natives and many leave because of the way she treats them.
Eventually she befriends one of the natives and looks to him for guidance which eventually turns into a physical relationship. This appalls their neighbour and he talks them into leaving the farm before she disgraces herself but by this time Mary has become mentally ill and Dick her husband has become depressed. The day they were supposed to leave the farm Mary is found dead on the verandah, her native friend Moses is waiting to be arrested.

This Was Doris Lessings first classic novel, written in 1950. She was living in Rhodesia when she wrote it.
Winner of Nobel Prize for lit 2007
Did I enjoy it? I found it tedious in places and wouldn’t say ‘you really should read this’. It was interesting and would make a good period tv drama series. To me the twist was that it was the female who was being cruel to the natives not the male.
I only stuck with it because we were reading it as a book group, I hated the thought of going to bed and having to read this book!