The Golden Notebook in Reading with Style

Sep 16, 2019 Whitney rated it it was ok

It takes time to build a perspective around this book. London. 1950s. (Book published 1962.) Author and the main character are very similar, if not the same, person, a woman. Communist movement feels like a sort of social, mission-trippy club. The ruling classes of England are not threatened by the groups of Communist sympathizers. They make friends with the American communist club members who have been booted out of America.

Main character, Anna, has spent her young twenties doing communist "mis It takes time to build a perspective around this book. London. 1950s. (Book published 1962.) Author and the main character are very similar, if not the same, person, a woman. Communist movement feels like a sort of social, mission-trippy club. The ruling classes of England are not threatened by the groups of Communist sympathizers. They make friends with the American communist club members who have been booted out of America.

Main character, Anna, has spent her young twenties doing communist "mission" work in Africa. The men in her group are either avoiding the war, or they're on leave, or they're simply not involved because they've been living and being the "colonial leaders" of the town for the past dozen years? After her group of comrades breaks up, she returns to London to spend her 30s onward, marries, becomes mother of a girl named Janet (who barely ever appears in this story). And shortly after the birth, Anna divorces from her husband.

In this setting, author explores what it means to be a "Free Woman," during this 20 year period of the book's action.

Free Womanhood seems absolutely dismal. Is it worse than marriage? Or maybe it was just a totally different type of dismal, in relation to what married women endured.

The whole book wonders: WHERE ARE THE GOOD MEN??? The "REAL" Men?? The HONEST Men??? Is it a spoiler for me to say that, I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER. THIS BOOK DOESN'T HAVE ANY. For a book supposedly "about" "FREE WOMEN," it's mostly just full of the main character, Anna, needing to deal with terrible men. It's a shame, because she loves men. She loves them when they're bad; she loves them when they're impotent; she loves them when they're abusive. She loves cooking for them. But supposedly she's soooo lucky for being a "Free Woman."

It was a difficult time. Anna has the potential to have a decent support system of friends. She regularly talks to a psychotherapist. However, her friends and therapist didn't help. Back in those days, even the most educated women still saw each other as potential enemies. They were each other's competition, in the race to get the "good" men. And even the female psychotherapist, who could have coaxed Anna out of her depression and anxiety . . . Well, she was a psychotherapist. Psychotherapy, as a study, is obsessed with dreams, and it conveniently blames every single problem on mother figures. Women were TRAINED to believe that their natural thought patterns were wrong and abnormal, therefore sanctioning every terrible thing that was done to them by their male partners or family members.

These days, feminists don't waste their time on this book, I wouldn't think. It isn't too much to ask of men, is it? Step one: respect women. This means treat them as equals. Let's say that you're renting an apartment from a pretty woman. How about you don't insist on sleeping in her bed with her on your first night?? Not difficult, right? Well, Anna had to endure this, in the 1950s here. Also for men: step two. You're going to be accountable for your actions. What you do to women isn't going to disappear in the mists of forgotten history. Be aware that consequences may follow at any given time. This should not be difficult to plan for, either!

It's angering that the protagonist of this book, Anna, a fiercely intelligent, published author, allowed herself to just be a happy doormat. Yes, we all understand that humans crave love and protection. Many men make themselves to be doormats as well. But they're not here. The ones here in Anna's notebooks are plainly horrid. ...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Connie G rated it liked it

Shelves: politics, england, book-club, 1001-books, nobel-prize-author, europe, feminism-women, classic, africa

Anna Wulf, the author of one successful novel, lives in London with her daughter. Anna keeps four separate notebooks. In her black notebook, she writes about her African experiences during the days of colonial rule. In a red notebook, she writes about her involvement and later disillusionment with communism, and her concern about world politics. She has a yellow notebook where she writes her ideas for new stories, and where she also writes a fictionalized account of her own life. Her blue notebo ...more

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Jan 10, 2020 Dalton Babcock rated it really liked it

Shelves: 820-english-literature

The Golden Notebook is great and terrible. The writing is rich stylistically and psychologically but also rich in banalities about the sexes and irredeemable ideas about gay men.

The third person narration that comprises the book outside the notebooks is the most pleasant and coherent, but it also has the lowest stakes. The notebooks initially dragged for me, but by the end of them, as the thick black lines built...

This was some of the best writing I'd read in a while. Reading this book has not b ...more

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