When Doris Lessing died in 2013, I had a hard time imagining a world without her. She was versatile and original and I always wanted to see what she had to say. Now there would be no new books.

She had a great influence on my generation, probably even more so on the Second Wave feminists, as if she were writing primers for women’s survival. I first read her in my teens: the characters Anna Wulf and her friend Molly in The Golden Notebook reminded me of the sisters Ursula and Gudrun in D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. All four defy prescribed sex roles and are ambivalent about marriage. Lawrence’s influence on Lessing is clear, if fleeting.

It is not that we were at all like her characters: that’s not how we read. And yet we identified with them. These heroines transcend the conventions of women’s lives, finding love and sex outside of marriage, and working at jobs without clear demarcations, though happiness is not necessarily the result. These women are politically aware and empathetic, yet must guard themselves from the demands of others, which sometimes overwhelm them, as they do tend to overwhelm women.

And now that we live in a world without Lessing, I am happy to come across a Lessing sighting. The other day I read an Afterword she’d written for science fiction novel by Stanislaw Lem. She considered it a classic: she is not put off by genre categories. And her own science fiction series, the Shikasta books, were adapted by Philip Glass as an opera.

Sometimes I read Lessing for comfort, though that is not her forte. During a power outage after a storm destroyed our garage, I managed to read her autobiography by the light of a lantern. That I could read in such uncomfortable, dimly-lit circumstances says much for her style. Detractors call her style “flat-footed.” I find her writing compelling and urgent.

And I liked her personal insouciance. In a video on YouTube: she is filmed getting out of a taxi in front of her house and accosted by polite reporters with the news that she has won the Nobel Prize. “Oh f–,” she said. She added that “it” had been going on for 30 years, and they’d told her she’d never win. I’m sure she was pleased, but I like that initial response.

Since her death, critical studies and memoirs have been published, but no biographies to my knowledge. Patrick French was the authorized biographer, but I read that he died of cancer in 2023 at age 56. How very sad. Then I read that his biography, The Golden Woman, will be published in 2026. I look forward to it, but why must we wait so long? I’d like an advance copy – I mean way, way in advance – like now. But I’ll have to wait like other humans.