Name: The Golden Notebook
Rating: 3.166666666666667 (24 reviews)
ISBN: 9780007369133

Doris Lessing

The landmark novel of the Sixties – a powerful account of a woman searching for her personal, political and professional identity while facing rejection and betrayal.

The Golden Notebook

clara

Aber jetzt, als sie mit Molly dasaß und redete, wie sie es so viele hundert Male zuvor getan hatten, sagte Anna zu sich: warum habe ich immer dieses schreckliche Bedürfnis, andere Leute dazu zu bringen, die Dinge so zu sehen, wie ich sie sehe? Das ist wirklich kindisch. Worauf es hinausläuft, ist, daß ich Angst habe, mit dem, was ich fühle, allein zu sein.

The story of the inner and outer life of Anna, a young writer, single mother and member of the Communist Party, struggling with crises both in her domestic and political life, this book was hailed as a landmark by the Women's Movement.

The golden notebook

Edwin Lang

I found this a wonderful book: I found the ending and everything and ever development very satisfying. I was aghast to read in the Preface (which I read after reading the book) that most reviewers had seen the story as primarily one that depicted sex wars. Perhaps a prerequisite to reading the Golden Notebook was to have read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex first. And it was sobering to recall (as I learned, coincidentally while reading the book) that in Canada, in 1973, our Supreme Court – our highest court of law - ruled that women do not have right to a share to property after being married 25 years. I liked the story, and could appreciate the angst of someone like Anna Wulf, who had succeeded and then seemed to have lost her way. To be so lost seems such a (fragile) gift in our society where individuality counts: that we allow people to go crazy, on their own terms, in the hope that something great might emerge from it, as it frequently done. Today we have become worried about the crazy individualistic psychopaths in our midst preying on the innocents. But I see it as a diversion: one could imagine a Doris Lessing, probably outwardly crazy (and cranky), cranking out this masterpiece. After finishing the book and thinking over what I thought and how I might rate it, I laughed to think of a sequel that I had wished Doris Lessing had attempted to write: imagine her daughter, exposed to her mother’s free sprit, coming face-to-face with the hippie movement: in 1966 for example Janet would be 21 and probably in University. “Hipster” apparently was coined in the 1940’s and I am sure Anna had been an original, but I would have loved to see Anna’s reaction to her daughter becoming a hippie. I wish perhaps Ms Lessing might have introduced a good man in the story – we are out there you know! – but perhaps that would have been disruptive to the overall story and damaged its coherence. I think also that if I had been a Richard this book would have been not only disturbing but nearly incomprehensible. Ms Lessing made one comment (among many, on all topics, of course) that made me stop: she had a character say, a businessman knows only how to do one thing, make money. When you look around at the state of our societies, the growing gap between the very wealthy and not-so-wealthy, countries that are increasingly (insolvent) - sinking in debt, unable to maintain essential infrastructure, seemingly stymied at every turn – and that individuals and companies alike are storing, perhaps mimicking the cartoon Uncle Scrooge, their monies in off-shore vaults, one wonders if making money is really enough, and if perhaps we put too much value on that skill. For example, for all the in-depth coverage and excellent writing found in something like The Economist there is something almost autistic about it. As I am reading more I have come to appreciate artists in a way I had not done before: I like my authors to be honest, and do not like those that use their books as a platform for example to say it’s all the white man’s fault. I consider Doris Lessing an honest writer, and one who was able to look at society in all its complexity and intrigue. It was interesting I thought, that she mentioned that Anna Wulf, as a practice, submerges herself in newspapers, journals and the like, opening herself again and again, in faith, that society, humanity, is a complex beast, and needs to be understood, and in spite of everything, believing that we are in fact inching the boulder up the mountain, although it seems such an unrewarding, herculean and seemingly prone-to-failure task. Edwin

a novel

lucy rosenthal

edith w.

Daryl Houston

I really struggled with this one, which I suppose makes me a philistine. I've certainly read more difficult books, but the payoff in the difficult books I've liked is a lot bigger than any payoff this book had for me.

My tepid response to it has actually led me to begin to inspect my attitudes toward literature by women. I like a whole lot of literature by women, and some of my favorite books I've read in the last few years have been by women (some of my best friends are X). I don't think I have a chip on my shoulder about literature by women in general. But this book made me think at times of work by male authors whose work feels similar in places but has resonated more with me. For example, although Lessing's style here is very very different from Gaddis's, I feel like there's a kinship between this book and J R. I count J R among my favorite books in spite of its being annoying in some places and uninteresting or melodramatic in others. The books surely deal in similar material -- art and madness and the insufficiency of language and fragmentation of the psyche and of ideologies and of relationships. But Gaddis's book, which treats these topics from a generally male perspective resonates with me, while Lessing's, which treats them from a generally female perspective, does not. Am I just a pig?

None of this is to say that there weren't things to like in the book. There was humor and occasional profundity. There were scenes or ideas that made a lot of sense to me and that worked for me as written.

But there was also just so very much interaction between men and women that simply did not compute for me. I'm capable of imagining relationships and interactions that don't square with my own particular experience of the world. I enjoy it, even. But so much of what transpires between men and women in this book just seems written by someone who has never observed men and women interacting together. Some of this I realize is because of the period in which the book is written. I thought from time to time of work by Ayn Rand (yuck, I know) or of some of the detective novels I've been reading, in which people behave in ways that I know are dated and stilted and not really the ways most people interact anymore. Maybe literary fiction (by men and women) of the 30s through the early 60s is shot through with this sort of writing and I've just missed it all because most of the fiction I've read from the period is postmodern work that's just doing different things that have caught more of my attention than the relationship dynamics. Or perhaps, internet hermit that I am, I'm the weirdo who doesn't know how people interact. 

At any rate, for the struggle this book represented for me, I'd really want there to be a lot bigger payoff, and it just didn't float my boat.

Jennifer Benner

Jim Hagan

Melissa Railey

A kabel 

Jordan Peet

Eve Lynch

Neta Steingart

Yulande Lindsay

Satty

Liz Prinz

Hannah K

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna resolves to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

Doris Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.

The Golden Notebook

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