This book was only 70 pages long, and I finished it in an hour. It was good, not great. A little odd. The plot centers around two lifelong friends who, in their middle age, start affairs with each others' teenage sons. The book glosses over a lot of the more...sensitive parts of the story, so it wasn't as cringeworthy as you might think. ( )

Yes, I admit, I saw the movie and wanted to read the book next, or the novella in this case. I had never even heard of it before and would have thought that I would read [b:On Cats|4794097|On Cats|Doris Lessing|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1372045677s/4794097.jpg|4859165] from Lessing before anything else. This isn't even the right edition, so it messes up my page count (that one had four stories and I am not interested in them at the moment). Oh, well...

So I liked the story, hardly a surprise there, considering that I already knew what was going to happen. It had weird, even a bit disturbing relationships but I like weird, it makes things interesting. I am not sure if I like Lessing's writing, though. I read this in English and haven't read anything else from her before so I might be missing something. I wasn't always sure what she meant by some sentences, but then again, I usually like when everything isn't spelt out. I also both liked and disliked the ending. I would have liked to read more about them but I also like open endings because then I can "write" my own. I guess I just can't have it both ways. ( )

This is a standalone republication of the novella “The Grandmothers”, originally published in the collection The grandmothers: four short novels, to tie in with the release of the French/Australian film Two Mothers (2012), which was puzzlingly retitled Adore in some countries. (There was a door in the film, but it didn't seem particularly important to the plot...)

I read this shortly after seeing the film, so it was most interesting to notice the various little things that had been changed from novella to film. In this case, the story is so short that there was little need to cut material out, but the film did make one major change to the timing (Roz is separated from her husband about ten years earlier in the story than in the film) and a few more subtle changes to the background (e.g. by giving the women different jobs) all of which seemed to be designed to enhance the element of pastiche soap-opera already implicit in the bourgeois Australian beach setting. Lessing’s basic theme of a friendship between two women that creates a kind of family more important than sex, marriage, or what other people may think of them seems to carry through quite clearly from one medium to the other.

As a story, it's strong and memorable, and I can easily see why it would be the title story of any collection it appeared in, but I'm not sure if it's quite strong enough to meet the reader's expectations from a solo publication. Everything depends on establishing and justifying the central conceit of the plot, but there's not really all that much beyond that. If you hadn't seen the film, you'd probably find this a bit disappointing. ( )