The Good Terrorist Summary

The Good Terrorist is a political novel written in 1985 by British author Doris Lessing. The story follows Alice, a naïve drifter who lives in an abandoned house in London with a group of radical activists. Over time, she becomes involved in their terrorist activities.

Lessing was inspired to write this book after the Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombed the Harrods department store in London in 1983. She had once been a member of the British Communist Party but left after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Some critics described the novel as a satire, while Lessing herself called it humorous. The title is an oxymoron, showing Alice’s mixed nature—both caring and destructive.

The Good Terrorist is written in the third person but focuses on Alice’s point of view. Alice is a woman in her mid-thirties who studied politics and economics but has no job. She moves from one shared living space to another, staying with groups of people who think like her. She is followed everywhere by Jasper, a man she met fifteen years ago when she lived in a student commune. Alice took Jasper in and fell in love with him, but he is distant and uninterested in her. Over time, she becomes frustrated with his lack of emotion and the fact that he is becoming more interested in men. Alice believes she is a revolutionary fighting against "fascist imperialism," but at the same time, she still relies on her parents for money. Even though she depends on them, she treats them with disrespect.

In the early 1980s, Alice moves into an abandoned house in London with a group of like-minded people who also call themselves revolutionaries. The leader of the group is Bert, but he is not very effective. Among the others are Roberta, a caring woman, and her partner Faye, who is emotionally unstable and fragile. The house is in terrible condition, and the City Council has marked it for demolition. Most of the squatters do not care about fixing it, but Alice takes it upon herself to clean and repair the house. She also convinces the authorities to restore the electricity and water. Over time, Alice becomes like a mother to the group, cooking for them and handling the police whenever they try to remove them from the house.

The squatters belong to a group called the Communist Centre Union (CCU). They go to protests and demonstrations, but Alice does not take part in all of them. She spends most of her time working on the house instead.

Wanting to do more for their political cause, Jasper and Bert travel to Ireland and the Soviet Union. They offer to help the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the KGB, but both groups reject them. Meanwhile, a more organized and serious group of revolutionaries moves into the house next door. These new neighbors start using Alice’s house to transport weapons, and Alice does not like this. She voices her concerns, but mysterious strangers visit the squat and begin questioning their decisions.

Alice’s group eventually decides to take action on their own. They call themselves the "Freeborn British Communists" and start working with explosives. They build a car bomb, even though they do not have much experience. Alice does not completely agree with their plan, but she goes along with the majority decision. They choose to target an expensive hotel in Knightsbridge, but their lack of skill leads to disaster. The bomb explodes too soon, killing Faye and several bystanders.

The group is shaken by what they have done. Realizing how serious their situation is, they decide to leave the squat and separate. Alice, who has become disillusioned with Jasper, chooses not to follow him. She stays behind because she cannot bear to leave the house she has worked so hard to fix. Even though she had doubts about the bombing, she feels the need to justify their actions to others. However, she realizes that "ordinary people simply didn't understand." At this moment, Alice recognizes that she has become a terrorist, though she cannot remember exactly when she changed.