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reviewed The golden notebook by Doris Lessing (Harper Perennial modern classics)

Doris Lessing: The golden notebook (2007, Harper Perennial) 4 stars

The story of the inner and outer life of Anna, a young writer, single mother …

what gets left out

No rating

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.