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Ratings: ★★★★★ (4.5 / 5)
Genre: Literary Fiction, Romance, Psychological Fiction

Book Review:
Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, brings her extraordinary insight and artistry to bear on a subject she had not previously explored: love in later life. The result, Love, Again, is a fierce, compelling, and deeply moving examination of the nature and origins of love—and its remorseless ability to overwhelm and surprise us.

The novel centers on Sarah Durham, a sixty-year-old theater producer who has long believed herself beyond the reach of romantic passion. When she becomes involved in mounting a play based on the journals of Julie Vairon, a beautiful and wayward nineteenth-century woman, the production captivates everyone it touches. For Sarah, the effect is profound: she finds herself falling in love with two younger men, one after the other, forcing her to relive the stages of growing up—from immature and infantile love to mature love.

The critical response to Love, Again was extraordinary:

A.S. Byatt in The Times wrote: ''Lessing's mixture of passionate involvement and the capacity to stand back and take a long look at what was going on, or will go on, is unlike that of any novelist writing now... Love, Again grips, maddens, depresses and excites the reader from the first page to the last.''

Ruth Brandon in New Statesman and Society called it: ''A wholly compelling book, as vigorous and thought-provoking as anything she has ever written.''

Candia McWilliam in Independent on Sunday described it as: ''A grand novel, boldly hewn... An encounter with a magnificent mind and temperament in artistic maturity.''

Allan Massie in Scotsman went further: ''By restoring love to the centre of the novel, Lessing has written a book that readers will love; a novel that Stendhal and Colette would have been proud to have written.''

Lessing, who won the Nobel Prize in 2007, was praised by the Swedish Academy as ''that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.'' Love, Again is a perfect example of that description—a novel that explores the female experience with honesty, depth, and unflinching clarity.

This is a book for anyone who has ever loved, lost, or wondered about the mysterious power of passion to transform our lives. It is Lessing at her finest.