The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four and Five

Book 2 in the Canopus in Argos series

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This is a masterpiece. It’s the second book in the series, but this book stands alone. And even if the reader doesn’t know the greater significance of what the Zones are (which we learn in book one), the way she has put the archetypes in play is magnificent. I savored this book. I didn’t want it to end.

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In the silence, both heard that the drum was silent.

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She painfully pulled herself up, went into her rooms, and came out almost at once in her own dark red dress. She did not look at him.

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‘You can’t go unless they tell you,’ he said, stupid and threatening.

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‘The drum has stopped, can’t you hear?’ she said in a voice that was drained of any life.

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She went out and stood calling for her horse. At once he could hear the beast coming, clip-clop among the fountains.

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‘Then don’t come back,’ he said, broken. He could not believe what had happened. He could not make the early part of their being together match what he had just done.

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It seemed to him that he had been standing on the verge of some landscape that he had never even imagined and that it had vanished.

Rereading this again after 15 years, I was struck (again) by how masterful Doris Lessing is at setting a tone.

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In this book, she sets three tones (which include particular language, ideas, behaviors, motivation, etc.) to correspond with each Zone. With those tones in place, she is able to communicate subtle ideas, concepts that make you think, using very simple metaphors.

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Doris Lessing won a Nobel Prize in 2007 for her contribution to literature, and she deserved it.

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And I do not think I am being fanciful when I say that this was at least partly because it had already taken place — but elsewhere. After all, this story of Al·Ith has taught us all that what goes on in one Zone affects the others, even when we believe we are hostile, or forget everything that goes on outside our own borders. We share and exchange even our times of sluggishness, insularity, self-applause. When those women strove and struggled to lift their poor heads up so they could see our mountains towering over them it was as if they were secretly pouring energy and effort into springs that fed us all.

In this book she covers the mechanics of evolution, how our various lives are interconnected on levels we don't understand, and the ways in which we behave on our evolutionary journey when residing in a particular mind-set.

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These themes might sound dry but Doris Lessing wraps the whole thing in a very readable book that, at its core, is a love story. She creates images that linger in the mind for many years after reading this book.

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Whole-heartedly recommended.

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