The golden notebook

Not so sure what to say about this one or what to think about it. It's long, and at times tedious, but it's also really interesting. It offers a picture of both the cynicism and hope embedded in socialist and communist circles during the middle 20th Century. It also is very focused on the act of "naming"...and how that act pins things down, "buttons them up," and sometimes even gives relief.

A novel about the process of writing a novel, about translating experience into something else, and about how that act of translation will always leave something out.

“It may be observed most easily in religion and politics (that) any kind of single mindedness, narrowness, obsession was bound to lead to mental disorder, if not madness.”

Incredible character writing by Lessing, in her magnum opus. The book has five parts, segmented by the mind of the protagonist Anna into her four notebooks and her real life. The writing here is superb, particularly in the dialogue and character development, as Lessing tackles British Communism and Feminism, along with post-Colonial attitudes and life in the nuclear age simultaneously. Each topic is given space to be explored and debated through the characters in the book, and each is given its own life as part of Lessing's flawless prose. Incredible.

Five novels, for the price of one.

The book was a slog for the both of us, and both the politics and the feminism came across as dated. The structure of the book was interesting though, although trying to reconcile its separate parts made my head hurt. Some of the notebooks were obviously more fictional than others, or rather, some were the fictional creations of fictional characters. But it was not obvious which ones were which. Was the Free Women story the 'truth', narrated by Doris Lessing, against which the other stories were diverging? Or was Free Women just another novel written by Anna?