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The Golden Notebook (1962)

by Doris Lessing

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
5,357921,947 (3.64)1 / 424
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 year. 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 reviles part of her own experience. And in the blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.… (more)
  1. 31
    The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (readerbabe1984)
  2. 31
    The Two of Them by Joanna Russ (lquilter)
    lquilter: While reading The Two of Them by Joanna Russ, I was persistently reminded of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. The female protagonist's articulated rage, the psychoanalytic approach, the insurmountability of the patriarchy. For readers across genres who liked either of these novels, I would suggest trying the other.… (more)
  3. 00
    Orwell and Politics (Penguin Modern Classics) by George Orwell (DLSmithies)
    DLSmithies: Alright, this one's tenuous, but bear with me! Orwell has lots of interesting things to say about the socialist movement of the 30s and 40s in Britain and elsewhere, especially in Stalin's Russia. Similarly, the Communist Party in 1950s Britain looms large in the background of The Golden Notebook, and the main character is deeply troubled by the situation in Russia under Stalin (along with everything else that's happening on the world stage at the time). So, you see, there's a link!... ...or maybe it's just me.… (more)
  4. 12
    DORIS LESSING CHILDREN OF VIOLENCE (geneven)
    geneven: This five-book series is great, though depressing in spots. (I haven't read The Golden Notebook.)
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» See also 424 mentions

English (79)  Spanish (5)  German (2)  French (2)  Italian (1)  Bulgarian (1)  Danish (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (92)
Showing 1-5 of 79 (next | show all)
The Golden Notebook is the final book on this iteration of my reading list and–unfortunately–was not a case of saving the best for last. It landed on my list as part of TIME magazine's All-TIME 100 as A Book With A Color In Its Title; in hindsight, I would reclassify it as A Book At The Bottom Of Your To-Read List.

Doris Lessing's novel is structurally complex, consisting of six parts, each of which (save one) begins with the continuing story of Anna Wulf, a divorced novelist raising her pre-teen daughter in London, and her friend Molly Jacobs, a divorced actress raising her twenty-year-old son. Within these parts are the contents of four colored notebooks (black, red, yellow, blue), Anna's memoir, political ramblings, fictional musings and diary, respectively. Further complicating the reader's comprehension is the backward revelation of much of Anna's story, where the notebooks reveal fictionalized events in her life prior to Anna as narrator disclosing their "real" counterparts. Add to this the climax of the novel—the simultaneous mental breakdowns of fictional-Anna and her Sybil-like male flat mate, and you have a confused collection of stories about a promiscuous former communist living an intellectually vacuous life off the royalties of her one and only novel.

While this schizophrenic structure is probably intended to give the reader the feeling of sharing Anna's breakdown, I found it numbingly over-complicated. Tellingly, Lessing often felt her first-person narrator needed to identify herself by name (e.g. "I, Anna...") so the reader could distinguish between Anna's "real" and fictive narration. The scenes at the beginning of each part are mostly dialogue paired with intrusive adverbs ("he said angrily") using an anonymous narration, no character point-of-view that often doesn't provide sufficient information to understand why particular statements are made. While the novel also suffers repetitive dream sequences and abstruse conversations between Anna and her psychoanalyst, my main objection is that Anna is simply an unlikeable character whose convictions vacillate in reaction to every sentence spoken to her. Compounding my dislike is her annoying role as analytical observer, criticizing others with a false sophistication when she herself is so flawed.

My copy of The Golden Notebook is 623 pages long; on page 565, Anna finally admits she's had writer's block since her highly successful debut novel. To me, this novel reads like Lessing suffered the same problem and has just stitched together several discordant attempts at a novel similar to Anna's efforts in the fictive story. ( )
  skavlanj | Jan 14, 2024 |
3.5 stars because of its originality but this is really hard to read and understand. Even now having read the book, I am not sure if I grasped its meaning. ( )
  siok | Nov 26, 2023 |
Some people read and even enjoy reading more than one book at a time. Personally, I like to focus on one book at a time and my first beef with the Golden Notebook was that it felt like I was reading at least four different novels. The main novel centered around Anna and once I got used to the author's style, I realized that all the novels contained alter egos of Anna, and came to understand and respect the the courage it took Lessing to write a novel in this fashion. But my second beef with the novel had to do with Anna and her alter ego characters . From what I've read about award winning author Doris Lessing, this was in many ways a very auto biographical novel. And it's often considered one of the first and finest works of feminist literature and that really puzzled me. Because while the character of Anna did raise a child by herself, without the aid of a man, she was in no way a role model. She hopped in and out of bed with countless strangers, falling for and clinging to them, only to be hurt again and again. This vicious cycle got so bad it nearly led to a mental breakdown. So while this novel was interesting at times, I just don't understand how it can be considered a work of feminist literature ( )
  kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 |
Reason read: Nobel prize winning African authors. Reading 1001.
I enjoyed this book mostly. I liked the parts that were about communism and my least favorite parts were the love affairs. Major themes are; African history, leftist politics, psychoanalysis, war, male/female relations, madness. It really is about fragmentation and though not mentioned it is about the process of writing. the four notebooks symbolize the fragmentation but also the way the author tried to organize thoughts in order to write.

As I said my favorite parts were the analysis of communism 1930 to 1950 and not because it was compelling but all the reasons why communism is just not the answer and will never be any better than any other form of government. It was interesting to read both The First Circle and The Golden Notebook in the same month.

Quotes
pg 41, "...how many of the things we say are just echoes? That remark you've just made is an echo from the communist party criticism--"

pg 88,89. "Thomas Mann, the last of the writers in the old sensewho used the novel for philosophical statements about life. The point is that he function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an oupost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don't know....."
"The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided."

pg 72 "..at Oxford these three had been homosexuals. ---"But at the word homosexual, written--well, I have to combat dislike and disquiet. Extraordinary, I qualify the word by saying that already, only eighteen months later, they were making jokes about "our homosexual phase" and jibing at themselves for doing something simply because it had been fashionable."

pg 428 ..."corrupted by years of work in the Stalinist atmosphere. You know they will do anything to maintain their position. Your know, because you have given a hundred examples of it here this evening, that they suppress resolutions, rig ballots, pack meetings, lie and twist. There is no way of getting them out of office by democratic means partly because they are unscrupulous, and partly because half of the Party members re too innocent to believe their leaders are capable of such trickery."

I was going to rate this 4.5 but there is so much that was also miserable to read that I think I will just keep it at 4. I am glad to have finally gotten this one read. It has been on the shelf since 2013 ( )
  Kristelh | Jun 6, 2023 |
There are two things that struck me about this book: 1) how difficult it is to read despite fascinating topics written with a crisp and clear style; 2) how incredibly modern it is: it hasn't aged one bit.
Lessing is part intellectual, rational, logical and part raw emotion tapping into the depth of the soul. While it is not always evident, it comes in waves through different notebooks, the different perspectives weaving in and out of each other.
My favourite parts were definitely the nostalgic scenes of Mashopi which hold the foundation of the book: relationships between men and women, social inequality - notably racism and feminism - and capitalism, the very themes that we still struggle with today.
A tough read but a masterful novel. ( )
2 vote Cecilturtle | May 13, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 79 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (16 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Lessing, Dorisprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Marcellino, FredCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Stevenson, JulietNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Valentí, HelenaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vink, NettieTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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The two women were alone in the London flat.
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Ella decides to write again, searches herself for the book which is already written inside her, and waiting to be written down. She spends a great deal of time alone, waiting to discern the outlines of this book inside her.
Having a child means being conscious of the clock, never being free of something that has to be done at a certain moment ahead. I was sitting on the floor this afternoon, watching the sky darken, an inhabitant of a world where one can say, the quality of light means it must be evening, instead of: in exactly an hour I must put on the vegetables.
The essence of the book, the organisation of it, everything in it, says implicitly and explicitly, that we must not divide things off, must not compartmentalise.
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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 year. 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 reviles part of her own experience. And in the blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

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