The Diaries of Jane Somers Books in Order

The Diaries of Jane Somers brings together two linked novels that Doris Lessing first published under a pseudonym to test how an unknown writer might fare. Read together, they form a careful, often uncomfortable portrait of middle age, loneliness, and the work of caring for others.

In The Diary of a Good Neighbour we meet Jane Somers, a stylish deputy editor at a glossy women's magazine. Outwardly she is successful, busy with clothes, deadlines, and office politics. Inwardly she is grieving the recent deaths of her husband and mother and is surprised by her own emotional distance. When she befriends Maudie, a fiercely independent, very elderly woman living in poverty and squalor, Jane's carefully arranged life begins to tilt.

Much of the novel is taken up with the slow, practical work of visiting, shopping, cleaning, and negotiating hospitals and social services on Maudie's behalf. Jane's diary entries capture both her genuine affection and her irritation. Lessing is sharply attentive to class differences, to the way professionals and relatives talk over very old people, and to how easy it is for someone like Maudie to slip through the cracks.

If the Old Could... continues Jane's story after Maudie's death. Here she becomes entangled in the crisis of her teenage niece Kate, who is bright, unstable, and sliding toward breakdown. The focus shifts from old age to youth, but the questions are similar: who takes responsibility, how much can one person do, and what happens when other family members simply look away.

These books are quieter than some of Lessing's more obviously experimental work, yet they are formally bold in their own way. By choosing a diary format and an apparently ordinary narrator, she puts readers inside the daily grind of illness, bureaucracy, and divided loyalties. The experiment with the Jane Somers name also exposed the publishing world's dependence on literary brands, something Lessing later spoke about with dry amusement.

As a sequence, The Diaries of Jane Somers offers an unsentimental look at the ties between generations, the invisibility of the very old, and the limits of good intentions.