Doris Lessing has been described as a hard nut to crack. In her own autobiography she warns, 'You will never get access here. You can't, this is the ultimate and inviolable privacy'.
With five biographies pending at the time, Carole Klein got in first. She reveals a woman continually reinventing herself, including embracing communism and feminism only to later discard them. The nut cracking makes it a little brittle and the overall tone is unsympathetic for a writer who was so keen to take on the task.
