SOURCE: Powers, Elizabeth. “The Unexamined Life.” Commentary 106, no. 3 (September 1998): 56-9.

In the following review, Powers refutes several widespread critical opinions of Walking in the Shade.

It would be interesting to know how many of those who purchase Doris Lessing's turgid novels actually get all the way through them, but there is no doubting that she herself is a cultural icon. Practically with the appearance in 1962 of The Golden Notebook, whose protagonist, Anna Wulf, was presented as a “completely new type of woman” living “the kind of life [women] never lived before,” a certain confluence was felt to exist between the ideals of the women's movement and the works of this Rhodesian-born writer.

The trouble with icons is that they require reverence. Though The Golden Notebook actually got a mixed reception from reviewers, its author's subsequent status has ensured a kind of critical meltdown with regard to her subsequent...