Doris Lessing’s new novel reduces fiction nearly to the vanishing point.

The Memoirs of a Survivor By Doris Lessing Knopf, 213 pp., $6.95

Some novelists strike one as far more adept at not writing (or knot writing) than at writing. And if that statement seems obscure, it is, nevertheless, a fair sample of Doris Lessing’s miasmic influence as manifested in her latest novel. The Memoirs of a Survivor is a bleak, meant-to-be-menacing fantasy of a vague, near-future time in a vague, near-familiar place—a fantasy that, although detailed, is devoid of color, of texture, of shape.

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The Memoirs of a Survivor By Doris Lessing Knopf, 213 pp., $6.95

Some novelists strike one as far more adept at not writing (or knot writing) than at writing. And if that statement seems obscure, it is, nevertheless, a fair sample of Doris Lessing’s miasmic influence as manifested in her latest novel. The Memoirs of a Survivor is a bleak, meant-to-be-menacing fantasy of a vague, near-future time in a vague, near-familiar place—a fantasy that, although detailed, is devoid of color, of texture, of shape.