Briefing for a Descent into Hell

Doris Lessing

Oh dear. They're all broken. Imagine the scene, you've been handed a dozen finely wrought images painted on a fine and delicate glass. They're piled in a haphazard manner and you've been given the time to view and dissect them. Then it's time to show them to someone else and on the way there you trip. You watch in horror as they fly in a parabola from your hands and land noisily on the ground, smashing into a million pieces and remaining little more than a chaotic mess on the ground. Your viewer turns up and then stands next to you looking at the ground, "what's that?" they ask. Then you have to try and explain the beauty of what was there before. Can you do it without sounding like a deranged idiot?

Can you hell. You flounder in embarrassment until the dustpan brush is brought out to clean up the mess. The beauty was there, it's just not easy to put into words. Like this novel. It's a disjointed dream journey, opening with a man brought into a hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, drugged and lorded over by a few physicians who can't quite work out how to deal with him. His lapses are into a different place, a different world. A journey and a different vision of reality. Colourful and surrealistic, you have to be there to experience it. And will walk away with your own view. Like waking in the morning after a series of colourful and entrancing dreams, then feeling the descriptions melt away as you try and express to someone else just what was so good about them.

It's a beautiful disaster rather than an easy read, but worth it. Not a page turner, rather a book unprepared to show you its secrets, one that burrows into you head when you're not looking. One that, for a moment, will make the world a very different place.