My rating:

add to my books

The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

3.64 · rating details · 3,870 ratings · 508 reviews

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 p

...more

Paperback, 635 pages

Published October 1st 2008 by Harper Perennial (first published 1962)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 8,904)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Apr 24, 2008

Kate rated it

· review of another edition

I don't often read books that when I've finish them leave me undecided over whether I've liked them or not but this is one of them. Some people say that they believe the book is not well-written but in my case the way it is written is part of my reason for liking it. I felt like I really knew Anna and found her struggles with self-disgust interesting for about the first half of the novel. It also brought up some interesting topics and I felt I learned a good deal about the extent to which som...moreI don't often read books that when I've finish them leave me undecided over whether I've liked them or not but this is one of them. Some people say that they believe the book is not well-written but in my case the way it is written is part of my reason for liking it. I felt like I really knew Anna and found her struggles with self-disgust interesting for about the first half of the novel. It also brought up some interesting topics and I felt I learned a good deal about the extent to which some people believed in communism which I had not been aware of.

However, the problem of the book appears when in the second half you realise that nothing is progressing. What was once interesting about Anna, becomes tedious and I found myself starting to dislike her. The way she continually chose to enter into relationships with married men while knowing exactly where she was going to end up afterwards. The fact that she always ended up blaming and hating herself for the endings of the relationships also annoyed me when the men that she had been with came across as such despicable, arrogant and egotistical human beings, who it seemed so obvious were only using her. What was more annoying was the fact that she knew this and continued with them and even loved some of them. I found it hard to believe any woman could love a man like Michael or Saul when all they seemed to do was wallow in self-pity and maybe that was why I became angry at her for continuing to love them.

I figure that this book was such a revelation and acheivement because of the time in which it was written. Apparently people were not aware that women had feelings and thoughts like men, and it was discussed with such honesty in the book that it was probably quite shocking and amazing. However, this has obviously been taken out of it due to the time that we live in and so has possibly detracted from the book.

The thing I found the most surprising though was that many people say this book is about feminism and that it shows that women do not just sit around talking about housework and men all day long, yet in my eyes talk about men seemed to be all they did most of the time. With the exception of the political backdrop, Anna's main focus was on the different men in her life and what she had said to upset them and how terribly she had behaved with them. For a character who is supposed to show that women are as good and strong and able as men, I thought she was too much of a victim.

Overall, I'm glad I read the book though. I wouldn't want to put anybody else off reading it because it seems that the opinions of it range from loving to loathing it. It was an interesting read and provokes interesting discussion with anybody else who has read it.(less)

like 7 likes

· see review

Mar 27, 2011

Fenixbird SandS is currently reading it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: women, men, relationship-interested

Recommended to Fenixbird by: NY Times Book Review

Shelves: nobel-prize-winners, controversial-innovative, disabilities-fiction, cultural-awareness, womens-issues, rights-of-passage

Setting 1950's London. "Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must b...moreSetting 1950's London. "Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.' "
— Doris Lessing Introduction (The Golden Notebook)

Just starting this book...which was written after her wonderful look (from a mid-life crisis talented woman's viewpoint) The Summer Before the Dark." On the cover of my dated paperback copy (1968), her book earlier work, The Golden Notebook, is promoted.

Quoting NY Times Reporters on author Doris Lessing's recent Nobel literature prize: "Ms. Lessing’s strongest legacy may be that she inspired a generation of feminists with her breakthrough novel, “The Golden Notebook.” In its citation, the Swedish Academy said: “The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work, and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship.”

Ms. Lessing wrote candidly about the inner lives of women and rejected the notion that they should limit their lives to marriage and children. “The Golden Notebook,” published in 1962, tracked the story of Anna Wulf, a woman who wanted to live freely and was, in some ways, Ms. Lessing’s alter ego.

Because she frankly described anger and aggression in women, she was attacked as “unfeminine.” In response Ms. Lessing wrote, “Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise.”

(less)

like 8 likes

· see review

Oct 04, 2010

Weinz rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Weinz by: Jessica Treat

And thus ends my summer of "I am WOMAN". Having read only female writers for the last four months (with a momentary departure for Dostoevsky) I feel I have rid myself of the phalocentricities of my normal reading. An egotistical misogynist cleansing.

**warning, teeny tiny spoilers... but not really... but kinda**

This novel is similar to other revolutionary books of the past (On the Road is the first one that comes to mind) I think that we have progressed beyon...moreAnd thus ends my summer of "I am WOMAN". Having read only female writers for the last four months (with a momentary departure for Dostoevsky) I feel I have rid myself of the phalocentricities of my normal reading. An egotistical misogynist cleansing.

**warning, teeny tiny spoilers... but not really... but kinda**

This novel is similar to other revolutionary books of the past (On the Road is the first one that comes to mind) I think that we have progressed beyond its original shock value. Its original revolutionary ideas and message have been used, reproduced and regurgitated onto film in abundance. At one time I can see Lessing's message in this novel as something revolutionary. A voice, until then, unheard of. Whereas now, it has the tired message of the past. A message that's significance has lessened or become obsolete.

At times in the novel I relished in Anna's words, in her emotions and her ideas only to watch this strong intelligent woman make the same "stupid woman" mistakes over and over with the same outcome every time. Is this indicative of the same struggle a lot self-reliant women go through? She values herself as an independent woman but routinely followed the same destructive path with men as her emotional crutch. Consistently picking the men that would keep her exactly where she was and never taking a step further into the unknown. She fell into a stagnant comfort zone of complacency.

As a divorced mom to three I have gone through my own journey in discovering what it really means to be a woman in our time; an independent free thinking woman of our time. I understand the conflicting feelings of feminism and vulnerability mixed with autonomy and doubt. Because of this it was painful to see Anna, a witty intelligent woman depend so much on the validation of men. Relying on the attention of men that, inherently she knows, are emotionally and physically unavailable. Anna's process of introspection is one I'm familiar with and use daily, her notebooks. The book itself was philosophical through journal writings and personal ramblings that comes to its own conclusions and absolutions by the end. Which is probably another reason I didn't not connect with the way this book concluded. I understood the reasoning behind Lessing's ending but disagreed.

Well written and worth the read.

Now back to the misanthropic readings I love so much. (less)

like 11 likes

· see review

Mar 02, 2010

K.D. rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Shelves: 1001-core, nobel

This most is the influential and most talked-about 1962 novel of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient, Doris Lessing. She was the 11th female who received the prize and the oldest (91 y/o) person ever to have won it.

Reading this 634-page dense novel was not a easy thing for me. There were times that I wanted to put it down and create a new shelf "Started But Not Finished" or probably "To Be Continued Someday." However, I have a promise to myself to finish...moreThis most is the influential and most talked-about 1962 novel of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient, Doris Lessing. She was the 11th female who received the prize and the oldest (91 y/o) person ever to have won it.

Reading this 634-page dense novel was not a easy thing for me. There were times that I wanted to put it down and create a new shelf "Started But Not Finished" or probably "To Be Continued Someday." However, I have a promise to myself to finish all the books I started. So I kept on reading. I made the right decision! I had an amazing time especially in the last 50 pages of the novel.

The format is a feat that is novel in itself: the main story inside the story is entitled Free Women and it is divided into several parts. Then each part is further divided into one of the 4 "notebooks" that the main protagonist, Anna Wulf, writes or has written: black (about her life in Africa), red (about her life as a communist in Britain), yellow (her scrapbook as a novelist) and blue (her diary). She even creates an alter-ego make-believe character, Ella present in the black notebook. Then there is the golden notebook which presents the theme "Breakdown." That notebook serves to be the synopsis of the 4 wherein the two main characters, Anna and her American lover Saul both wrote its entries as they share their love without hindrances and pretensions that explains the theme: breaking down the walls.

So, what is the story all about? Just like most appreciated novels, it depends on how you look at it. I agree with what Ms. Lessing wrote in her 1971 Introduction:

... that the book is alive and potent and fructifying and able to promote thought and discussion only when it is plan and shape and intention is not understood, because the moment of seeing the shape and plan and intention is also the moment when there isn't anything more to be got out of it.

And when a book's pattern and the shape of its inner life is as plain to the reader as it is to the author - then perhaps it is time to throw the book aside...

For me it is about: sex war, communism in Europe in the 50's and mental illness. In the first, it is said to have influenced the Women's Liberation during the post WWII era. In the second, I had a heyday learning about the spread of Communism in Europe in the 50's. Here is where I knew that there was a C.P. (communist party) in Great Britain during to years (or maybe up to now). Although communism is becoming thing of a past or shall I say, it is changing its face, it is nice to know what happened during those years. In the third, the novel can just be seen as populated by insane characters. The insanity here is not the mental institution type. It is about passion to survive, to be happy and to continuously hope despite the odds.

One nice short quote for those who still have valentine hangover: "Love's the same the world over."

I will always remember this book. This is my constant companion as a search for cure for my two completely torn ligaments due to the badminton accident that happened to me in the evening of February 23, 2010. As I lay in the surgeon's operating table tomorrow, I will keep in mind the beauty of this book - especially on insanity.(less)

like 4 likes

· see review

Feb 17, 2008

Sherry rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: classicscorner

There are so many things to talk about in this book, that I almost have brain freeze and don't talk about anything. I have to say, though, that I've never read anything that I remember having so much to do with the idealistic beginnings of the Communist Party. It's almost like people were even afraid to write fiction about it or they would be blackballed.

There were two introductions in my edition, one from the seventies, and one from the nineties. I read them after I had finished an...more

like 4 likes

· see review

Apr 01, 2008

Lara rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Lara by: My two mothers

Shelves: women-gender

Like so many others in these days since the controversial awarding of the Nobel prize to Doris Lessing, I am reading The Golden Notebook. I read another novel of hers last month, The Sweetest Dream, and I have to admit, I am not wild about her prose. I enjoy it – I smile bitterly along with thousands of others at the fact that apparently all one must do to receive such honors is to treat women as if they were important and worth thinking about with the same rigor we examine male motives and in...moreLike so many others in these days since the controversial awarding of the Nobel prize to Doris Lessing, I am reading The Golden Notebook. I read another novel of hers last month, The Sweetest Dream, and I have to admit, I am not wild about her prose. I enjoy it – I smile bitterly along with thousands of others at the fact that apparently all one must do to receive such honors is to treat women as if they were important and worth thinking about with the same rigor we examine male motives and introspection. Yet she has habits that annoy me: she makes me wait for physical details – I learn twenty pages in to a conversation that this man is not the chiseled figure I’d wrought from her silence, but rather a stout one with a round face and obstinate brow. I struggle to situate the speakers in a physical plane. She moves them with their dialogue and not their space; is she still on the couch, or isn’t she? I long for setting. I know Lessing is remarkably diverse, writing everything from accidental feminism to science fiction, and yet to me I see the same 5 characters entering and exiting rooms with predictable comments. Perhaps this is what she intends – this may very well be the thrust of her point, these types, these thematic repetitions.

Nonetheless, she is doing something in this novel that I find exciting beyond words. I could feel it coming, knowing before sitting down to read that the novel was a simple story divided up between the private, topical, diary-like notebooks of a central character. I could feel the arrival of the shift in voice as if it had knocked on the door of a scene, waiting to be let in. I stopped at the page I was at and leafed forward, looking for it – there is was, three pages later. I read quickly to get there, relieved that the story as it was crafting itself was not so much a narrative thread as it was an excuse for something else, for something, for lack of a better word, more novel. As Lessing herself writes, “...the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know...One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to try to make it a novel – the quality of philosophy,” (p. 58-9). I could feel the ideas coming, in the form of their own self-conscious doubt.

There is a voice we all have and yet we save. We have public voices, professional voices, voices of lewdness and drunken uninhibited voices, confessional voices, voices used only in bed, quite unrecognizable from those used to direct a taxi or place an order over the phone. We have different voices for when we are resentful or swollen with the false humility of pride. We have voices for children and for the elderly, for the sick or the dangerous or the insane. And sooner or later, other people hear these voices of ours. But there is one that is rarely heard – the diary voice. Already this is disingenuous, because I believe and you well know that, deep down, most diarists write in the hopes that their words will somehow be read, that the things they lack the courage to say aloud will somehow become known, that their undiscovered genius will come to light. Sometimes we make bargains – we agree with Fate to allow our words to find their way to the readers’ eyes posthumously, if need be. Who doesn’t feel misunderstood in her time? Or we find peace in the terrifying ritual of putting words to paper; for the guilty or the tragically unclear, the very act of forming the letters can feel like a death sentence and a liberation. Paper can be crumpled or burnt, marks erased, but writing can never be undone. Once we have written a thing, it seals our commitment even sounder than a spoken vow, for it was once concrete, a solid thing, more than disturbances of air and ear drums. There is a reason why we sign documents as solemn promises of acceptance and disallow many verbal agreements as utterly binding contractual faith. And yet the private performance of journaling brings forth a voice in people that has a bald truth to it, a naked and shivering inability to take an audience into account. Even our diary lies have more meat to them than the most gut-wrenching professional prose, which is always calculated on a certain level for effect.

The shift in Lessing’s work from the novel to the notebook has left me quiet and weeping. In such weakness we reveal such bravery, such moments when something of value is finally uttered between the craft of escapist (and, ultimately, dull,) storytelling.
“I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me:” she writes, as I cry. “- a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life.”
(less)

like 2 likes

· see review

Oct 11, 2007

Edan rated it

· review of another edition

I just found out Doris Lessing won the Nobel, and now I feel compelled to explain my one star review of her most famous book.

My gal pals and I read this over the course of a humid Iowa City summer, as part of a short lived and ill-conceived book club. We met once a week in a different apartment (though I can only imagine us at Kiki's place), to drink champagne and discuss the novel. Complain is really what we did--and then I went home with a champagne headache.

None of us...more

like 3 likes

· see review

Feb 14, 2008

Gerald rated it

· review of another edition

When I read that Doris Lessing had won the Nobel prize, I decided I should reconsider having laid one of her books aside years ago. The news item said this was among her most celebrated works, so I assumed I'd find the gold I'd missed and delight in having found another literary mentor.

I didn't finish it. And I tried, in several sittings. The main character seems to loathe herself, and her personal relationships range from dysfunctional to downright vicious.

Her memories a...more

like 4 likes

· see review

Mar 19, 2008

Ruth rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: aborted

I created a new Goodreads shelf, "aborted," specifically for this book (& any future ones that I stop reading). Apparently it's an important novel & has been very influential, but I found it terribly tedious. 126 pages in, I found myself sinking into a foul mood: the characters are minutely analyzed but still feel remote, & the central conflict at that point (the beginnings of the collapse of hope & a sense of purpose among a group of Communist Party members), which would normally fasc...more

like 8 likes

· see review

Jun 12, 2007

Kimberly Willson - St. Clair rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Linda

The other great Sufi writer, Doris Lessing, makes more sense to my world view in regards to how she breaks the atom so to speak in The Golden Notebook. This book changed my life the first time around in graduate school at American because the main character disintegrates through her writing and completely remakes herself through her writing. The reader goes through this experience with her, thus Art. When Madonna remakes herself, she goes it alone then looks for a reaction from the audienc...more

like 5 likes

· see review

Feb 07, 2009

Valerie rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: literary, on-writing, read-in-2009, lessing

Intelligent, unconventional, heavy (literally and figuratively!). The story revolves around Anna. A woman who once wrote a best selling book, but now struggles with writer's block- which seems to make her a little nuts. It is a book about disillusionment. Disillusionment of politics, humanity, history, love, sex, and self. A book about trying to make sense of the fractured pieces of self that come after great disappointments. At any rate, the book (like Anna) is split into so many pieces (5 sepa...more

like 3 likes

· see review

Nov 28, 2011

Blake rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: modern-classics

Prior to reading this I gathered from various conversations with various people that it has a fierce power to divide opinion that is ironically characteristic of its narrator who places the different aspects of her life into separate notebooks that precede the conclusive and eponymous final book into which it all pours together. Its critics seem to simplify it and read too much into the feminist passages; whereas Lessing herself wrote as much for the mental healing and creative aspects.

...morePrior to reading this I gathered from various conversations with various people that it has a fierce power to divide opinion that is ironically characteristic of its narrator who places the different aspects of her life into separate notebooks that precede the conclusive and eponymous final book into which it all pours together. Its critics seem to simplify it and read too much into the feminist passages; whereas Lessing herself wrote as much for the mental healing and creative aspects.

The story is of a one-time writer in London, Anna Wulf, who finds herself struggling with abandonment and madness, against the backdrop of the 40s' & 50s' disillusion with communism and the daily fears of destruction that are companion to a dark and technologically advancing world. In this state she has found a way to attempt her own rescue through four separately coloured notebooks, each playing in and out of the book's structure that are interspersed with an omniscient narration of her life, with each dividing one aspect of her life off from the others to avoid a chaotic and formless dissolution. Finally, and out of the failure of these divisions, she begins the golden notebook that promises to save her.

This book is not light reading and it is not the kind of exciting prose that thrills you from one page to the next. What it is and secures easily is a darkly intense look at a woman's emotional and intellectual life, which digs at and stresses its reader as much as or more than it entertains. Lessing's kind of honesty is not pretty and it's not without fault, but it has a very unique face that forces confrontation with opposers and does battle well even where it falters.

The final notebook (the golden notebook) contains a notorious fracture that is unprecedented in the foregoing chapters and threatens to overthrow everything we thought we knew, but I think Lessing has done something strong here by not focussing on the postmodern playfulness and instead resting her notes on the instrument rather than the air. For all the daringness of this one trick, she has already ensured that everything the reader needs to take from this book is not capable of collapse.(less)

like 3 likes

· see review

Dec 17, 2011

Stacy rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Stacy by: Nora Ephron

Shelves: classics, british-lit, feminist

A single mother and writer living in London in the 1950's, middle-aged Anna Wulf keeps four notebooks:

- Black: Her memories of living as an expatriate in colonial Africa in her 20's.

-Red: A chronicle of her political activity, and eventual
disillusionment with the Communist party.

-Yellow: A novel that closely mirrors her own life, especially her love affairs.

-Blue: A personal diary of her life experiences and emotions.

This 600+ pa...more

like 1 like

· see review

Feb 18, 2008

Tempest rated it

· review of another edition

In the beginning, I read ravenously. At the mid-section, I faltered.

I began to tire of the endless procession of married men and the affairs the main character, Anna, had with them. The men seemed to sing the same tune, of wives important to them socially but sexually and emotionally frigid.

Anna lives independently. She has published a novel, and lives off of the royalties. She is not married and is a single mother. She is a figure of feminine independence in a society...moreIn the beginning, I read ravenously. At the mid-section, I faltered.

I began to tire of the endless procession of married men and the affairs the main character, Anna, had with them. The men seemed to sing the same tune, of wives important to them socially but sexually and emotionally frigid.

Anna lives independently. She has published a novel, and lives off of the royalties. She is not married and is a single mother. She is a figure of feminine independence in a society of masculine dominance. Yet, by not accepting the social convention of marriage, she is set up to be emotionally ravished time and again. Each relationship she pursues is doomed from the beginning. This speaks less of Anna as a feminist and more to Anna being scared of permanence.

Anna keeps four notebooks that the reader skips amongst. One records her involvement and eventual breakage with the communist party, another records her early experiences in Africa. The last two are diaries; one a fictional account of her life, the other a truthful narrative. In this way, Doris Lessing does away with linear time. The reader weaves between present and past effortlessly. The past informs the present, and the present illuminates the past.

Towards the end of the book, the pages again flip effortlessly. The plots merge into the present, are filtered through insanity to prevent banality. The Golden Notebook ends on a musing of emotional ties, of sanity retained by necessity.

Lessing writes an introduction in which she says that she was not intending to make a feminist novel nor a political one. She wrote what she needed to write and it was the readers that inflected the novel with meaning. I found The Golden Notebook to be interesting both in theory and delivery, but did not think it succinct enough to be truly grappling. The ideas raised by Lessing are intriguing and worth rumination, and the plot is more-or-less engaging. But I was left unsatisfied, wanting something a little more. Perhaps this is because the bravery of writing such a book has dissipated into countless other books positing similar theories and asking similar questions. But, alas, I'm a product of my times. Those diluted copy-cat plots have made their mark upon me. (less)

like 1 like

· see review

Oct 17, 2007

Mimi rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone

Even though I read this book over 30 years ago, I remember how affected I was by its writer protagonist, and her various notebooks. I was a single mom, working and going to junior college, and Lessing's book was one I read in my first "Feminist Lit" course. It inspired me to try writing in various journals: I named one "Rage & Anger," another one "Dreams & Visions," and another "Magic & Madness." There were others, but I eventually went back to one jour...more

like 5 likes

· see review

Nov 18, 2008

Abeer Hoque rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: i-recommend

I still don't think I got my head around the wrapping conceit that Ms. Lessing used for this book, but I do know that it's the first time I finished a book and started it all over again. I'm halfway through the second read and it's as psychologically brilliant as the first read through. Her introduction alone is worth your time. Of course, it's arrogant to assume that the present has the monopoly on philosophical progress, but I am yet in awe as to how some things (about our consciousness and...more

like 3 likes

· see review

Mar 05, 2008

Jim rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: literary

In spite of all the efforts to include issues like the development of the Communist Party in the UK and the liberation of Africa, this still feels like 636 pages of kvetching about men. The basic problem seems to be that married men keep going back to their wives and promiscuous, insensitive men are promiscuous and insensitive.

This book is interesting because it is the signature work of a Nobel Prize winner not because it provides a lot of pleasure. It starts with a successful inve...more

like 3 likes

· see review

Jun 23, 2008

Eric Muhr rated it

· review of another edition

This book is too often read as a feminist polemic, or as an exploration of madness, or as an overtly political story (mostly communist). That's not the point. The central character, Anna, an artist with a block, demonstrates through her attempts to keep life compartmentalized (her means of getting at the truth of existence) and a resulting breakdown that madness may be the only path to sanity. After all, nothing less than a complete breakdown is strong enough to tear down our artificial walls an...more

like 4 likes

· see review

Jan 03, 2008

Ivy's Mom rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: All women

Shelves: nobel_laureates, times_100_best, 1001-books

Within a few hours of the announcement that Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize I put in my request at the library. Ten weeks later I got my turn. Started reading Christmas day...sneaking away from the family to read the two introductions...oh the brilliance recorded there!

The the disappointment. The first 100 - 150 pages did not engage me...but by about page 200 things began to click. The story began to emerge. The brilliance was suddenly golden. I found a novel dazzling in its sc...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Dec 22, 2008

tish rated it

· review of another edition

I want to add a review before I forget too much, but there is just so much in this book that I'm finding it difficult to summarize. I think it is a brilliant examination of a very particular time in history, and those observations reveal conflict and change and the possibility of something new. The structure of the novel is really interesting and allows Lessing to discuss so many different subjects from the personal to local politics to a changing social order. I have particular questions about ...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Aug 12, 2011

Siri added it · review of another edition

It's not that I mind reading about feminism, not at all, but this book really didn't do it for me: Not old enough to be an interesting historical insight, but not recent enough to feel relevant in this day and age. It's a bit like having to sit through a dinner with your grandparents, listening to them prattling about how fantastic the post-war years were, cementing to themselves a hegemony that was never as rosy as they remember it.

But digressions aside, The Golden Notebook touches on many subj...more

· see review

Jun 02, 2011

Sarah rated it

· review of another edition

I’ll be honest with you – when I read the last line of this book, I thought “Thank God I’m done with that.” The premise sounds intriguing. And it’s hailed as the greatest book to ever capture how women think. So I dove in excitedly. And was horribly disappointed. For the first section, I was overwhelmed with the creativity of it all. The notebooks were interesting and anything about Africa will keep my attention for a while. But after the first 100-150 pages, I found myself dragging my eyes alon...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Aug 15, 2010

Tara rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: yikes

What I learned from this book: Sometimes boredom propels me to do things I wouldn't usually do, i.e., finish crappy books such as this. Page after page, it never got better or impressed or entertained me or anything of the sort. The only angle of appreciation that I can muster for it is that it expresses the viewpoint of a "free woman" in 1950's London. Wow. Everyone in the book was having an affair or multiple affairs with multiple mistresses or married men without much concern. Some ...more

like 1 like

· see review

Jan 14, 2010

Adam rated it

· review of another edition

I've read this book three times over 25 years, and each time it has said something different, which testifies to its power and complexity. My first read as a callow youth I saw the struggle to articulate a new kind of womanhood, determined to be independent of men but still caught within their orbit. It made me understand better the yearnings of my mother, also a writer with a family, to express herself beyond what was expected of her, and see her writing as a central part of her drive for freed...more

like 1 like

· see review

Jun 07, 2009

Eva rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: unfinished, feminist-literature, fiction

When Doris Lessing won the nobel prize for literature, my bookclub decided it was time to read one of her books. We choose The Golden Notebook. And we all started optimistically. 1 month later it turned out that of the 8 members of our bookclub, only 2 people finished the book. I wasn't among them.
I started in the book and tried for a week to wrestle myself past the first pages, but i just couldn't do it. I found it very hard to relate to the main character. She's full of selfloathing and ...more

· see review

Apr 06, 2011

Shelley rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: A female audience

“The Golden Notebook”
By: Doris May Lessing
New York, 1962
Simon and Schuster

Life collapses, intensifies, and reality overwhelms a middle aged writer in Doris Lessing’s entrancing tale, “The Golden Notebook.” Employing an intriguing storyline, Lessing captivates her reader less with diction and more with the story’s intricately woven complications. Combating writer’s block after her first novel’s success, the narrator, Anna Wulf, attempts to find order within her s...more“The Golden Notebook”
By: Doris May Lessing
New York, 1962
Simon and Schuster

Life collapses, intensifies, and reality overwhelms a middle aged writer in Doris Lessing’s entrancing tale, “The Golden Notebook.” Employing an intriguing storyline, Lessing captivates her reader less with diction and more with the story’s intricately woven complications. Combating writer’s block after her first novel’s success, the narrator, Anna Wulf, attempts to find order within her shattered life. In the novel’s opening lines Anna asserts, “The point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracking up.” In her unsuccessful attempt to untangle life’s knots, four notebooks seem to yank at one another’s bindings as they alternate between chapters. Where the black notebook captures Anna’s experiences in Africa, the red notebook expounds upon politics, especially her disenchantment with communism. A fictional heroine named Ella, sharing uncanny similarities to Anna, is depicted within the yellow notebook; while Anna’s fourth blue notebook serves as a personal journal. As the notebooks intertwine, four stories act as threads to form the greater tapestry in Anna’s pursuit to define her life. Providing a pungent new taste to the narrator’s depth, Lessing divides her chapters into notebooks to structurally enhance the reader’s perception of Anna.

Mirroring Anna Wulf’s complexity, Lessing shamelessly structures her novel in disjointed parts. Twisted by family, friends, lovers, and letdowns, Lessing frequently manipulates the narrator’s internal observations to provide the reader with insight. Skillfully using her craft, Lessing interchangeably switches between different viewpoints in her chapters. Using the first person in the black, blue, and red notebooks, Lessing sporadically changes to the third person in the yellow notebook and in her chapters titled “Free Women.” Lacking poetic flow, some readers may find Lessing’s writing style choppy and raw; however, the novel’s structure serves as an extra layer to Anna’s self development. Lessing creates a character desperately trying to sort out her life through the written word; yet as the reader discovers, Anna’s attempt only creates chaos. Exaggerated by her own overwhelming emotions, Anna Wulf’s pain is primarily self-afflicted. Although the reader finds most conflict internal to Anna’s mind, problems lie externally to Anna as well.

Underlying beneath the text’s breath lies feministic struggles for women born in the mid- twentieth century. Zealous words in the novel ignite feminist passion as Lessing depicts the untraditional, independent woman. Exemplifying the struggle to break the barriers that bind women, Anna states how “they still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them" (10). Engulfed by Anna’s perception, the reader is force fed her opinions, which tend to illustrate men as boorish beings, hindered by their own inadequacies. Unconventionally for her time, Anna must consolidate herself, her writing career, and raise her daughter Janet after her marriage fails.

“The Golden Notebook” is best read with an open mind, and with much room for interpretation. Digesting complex and vastly differing dimensions within Anna’s life, Lessing’s novel is best suited for a female audience with the thirst for an unusual tale. The book’s structure, while easily misunderstood, should equally be viewed with care and with purpose; for it contributes immensely to the piece. Undeniably, “The Golden Notebook” functions with dysfunction as the reader joins Anna in her pursuit to untangle her life on paper. (less)

· see review

Oct 28, 2010

C. rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, award-winner-author

The Golden Notebook (Paperback)
by Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. She is the author of numerous novels, science-fiction, short-stories, drama and non-fiction. She is considered a feminist writer by most critics
This book is an experiment of sorts. The structure is: A main story (which can be sufficient by itself) and then four other notebooks Anna Wulf created in order to keep her sanity. Then there is the "Golden No...more

· see review

Dec 21, 2008

Jessica rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, classic, england, psychology, borrowed-from-mom

While cemented as a Very Important Book with Lessing's Nobel win, it's clearly of a time and place that I don't necessarily relate to. I'm somewhat surprised that Lessing claims in her introduction that the book was received as a novel about the sex war, because it doesn't read that way to me - while there are strong elements of tension between men and women, it seemed to have far more to do with the inherent problems of the characters involved than society at large. Perhaps it's just a sign o...more

like 1 like

· see review

Nov 09, 2008

Jac rated it

· review of another edition

This book knocked the wind out of me. Don't believe people who tell you this is a hard book to get through. It can be challenging and it is long, but it moves. Once you've situated yourself in the first 150 pages or so, you will zoom right along. I am sad it is over. I miss the main character already. Doris Lessing really put her finger on something that I imagine was stronger a little while back, but I can still feel it in the air. Read this book!

like 1 like

· see review

Nov 29, 2011

Vicente M. rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: nobel-lit-winners

In the middle of a whirlwind, that's how Ms. Lessing puts her main character, Anna Wulf? It is Anna's story, a writer and single woman, who lives with her young daughter in a flat, occasionally renting out a room, less for the income than out of a reflex of social obligation. Laboring against a writing block, following the immense success of her autobiographical debut novel about a group of Communists in colonial Africa, Anna struggles to find a way to integrate the multiple selves that fragment...more

like 2 likes

· see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 296 297 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
eduation	2	16	Sep 16, 2011 09:14am
Classics Corner	44	26	Feb 27, 2008 09:38am

combine
Other Editions (36)

More editions...

Genres

Classics

60 users

Feminism

31 users

Novels

23 users

Literature

20 users

European Literature > British Literature

17 users

Womens

14 users

Book Club

12 users

Literary Fiction

12 users

Cultural > Africa

11 users

Literature > 20th Century

8 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

About Doris Lessing

Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Oliv...moreBoth of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).(less)

More about Doris Lessing...

Books by Doris Lessing

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About The Golden Notebook

6 trivia questions
1 quiz

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from The Golden Notebook

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” — 406 people liked it

“Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.” — 33 people liked it

More quotes…

Groups That Shelved The Golden Notebook

Boxall's 1001 Books You ...

10996 members

last activity 1 hour, 42 min ago

shelf: read

Book Haven

3362 members

last activity 6 minutes ago

shelf: read

Constant Reader

2862 members

last activity 16 minutes ago

shelf: read

title link	preview: The Golden Notebook
avg rating	preview: The Golden Notebook Goodreads rating: 3.64 (3870 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2898912-the-golden-notebook?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255640530m/2898912.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2898912-the-golden-notebook?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing[/url]

The Golden Notebook

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Readers Also Enjoyed

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website