Lessing paints an accomplished portrait, one riven with sadness, a tale of the blurring of all those lines that are essential to one people lording it over another. How can there not be, given the unmoored drifter that Dick Turner, who farms his veldtland in fits of whimsy given the complex Mary Turner, her head a-churn with so much hope, all dashed against severe disappointment again and again, tearing herself to pieces with her own anger given the relentless scorching indifference, even cruelty, of the land they live and work on. There, of course, is no train but there definitely is going to be a crash. Within a few pages, the reader knows that she is going to bear painful witness to a train crash of devastating proportions.

What a masterly depiction of human frailty. The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (Harper Perennial)was my pick for a TBT read. And once in a while, the reader needs to go back to her bookshelf, pick up an old favourite and slowly sink into the world inside those pages.

Doris lessing the grass is singing