Critical opinion is divided on The Good Terrorist. Elizabeth Lowry highlighted this in the London Review of Books: "[Lessing] has been sharply criticised for the pedestrian quality of her prose, and as vigorously defended".[47] The Irish literary critic Denis Donoghue complained that the style of the novel is "insistently drab",[17] and Kuehn referred to Lessing's text as "surprisingly bland".[3] Lowry noted that the English academic Clare Hanson defended the book by saying that it is "a grey and textureless novel because it ... speaks a grey and textureless language".[47]
Freeman described the book a "graceful and accomplished story",[2] and a "brilliant account of the types of individuals who commit terrorist acts".[2] Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Freeman described Lessing as "one of our most valuable writers" who "has an uncanny grasp of human relationships".[2] In a review in the Sun-Sentinel, Bonnie Gross wrote that it was Lessing's "most accessible" book to date, and that her "strong descriptive prose and her precise and realistic characterizations" made it "remarkable" and "rewarding reading". Gross considered the female characters, particularly Alice, much more developed than the male ones.[1]
Amanda Sebestyen wrote in The Women's Review of Books that at first glance the ideas in The Good Terrorist appear deceptively simple, and the plot predictable.[48] But she added that Lessing's strength is her "stoic narrat[ion] of the daily effort of living",[48] which excels in describing day-to-day life in a squat.[48] Sebestyen also praised the book's depiction of Alice, who "speak[s] to me most disquietingly about myself and my generation".[48] In a review in Off Our Backs, an American feminist publication, Vickie Leonard called The Good Terrorist a "fascinating book" that is "extremely well written" with characters that are "exciting" and "realistic".[49] Leonard added that even though Alice is not a feminist, the book illustrates the author's "strong admiration for women and their accomplishments".[49]
Writing in The Guardian, Rogers described The Good Terrorist as "a novel in unsparing close-up" that examines society through the eyes of individuals.[8] She said it is "witty and ... angry at human stupidity and destructiveness",[8] and within the context of recent terrorist attacks in London, it is an example of "fiction going where factual writing cannot".[8] A critic in Kirkus Reviews wrote that Alice's story is "an extraordinary tour de force—a psychological portrait that's realistic with a vengeance".[18] The reviewer added that although Alice is "self-deluding" and not always likeable,[18] the novel's strength are the characters and its depiction of political motivation.[18]
Donoghue wrote in The New York Times that he did not care much about what happened to Alice and her comrades. He felt that Lessing presents Alice as "an unquestioned rigmarole of reactions and prejudices",[17] which leaves no room for any further interest.[17] Donoghue complained that Lessing has not made up her mind on whether her characters are "the salt of the earth or its scum".[17] In a review in the Chicago Tribune, Kuehn felt that the work has little impact and is not memorable. He said Lessing's real interest is character development, but complained that the characters are "trivial or two-dimensional or crippled by self-delusions".[3]
The Good Terrorist was shortlisted for the 1985 Booker Prize,[50] and in 1986 won the Mondello Prize and the WH Smith Literary Award.[51] In 2007 Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for being "part of both the history of literature and living literature".[52] In the award ceremony speech by Swedish writer Per Wästberg, The Good Terrorist was cited as "an in-depth account of the extreme leftwing squatting culture that sponges off female self-sacrifice".[13] Following Lessing's death in 2013, The Guardian put The Good Terrorist in their list of the top five Lessing books.[53] Indian writer Neel Mukherjee included the novel in his 2015 "top 10 books about revolutionaries", also published in The Guardian.[54]
