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This largely autobiographical work comprises Anna's four notebooks: "a black notebook which is to do with Anna Wulf the writer; a red notebook concerned with politics; a yellow notebook, in which I make stories out of my experience; and a blue notebook which tries to be a diary." In a brilliant act of verisimilitude, Lessing alternates between these notebooks instead of presenting each one whole, also weaving in a novel called Free Women, which views Anna's life from the omniscient narrator's point of view. As the novel draws to a close, Anna, in the midst of a breakdown, abandons her dependence on compartmentalization and writes the single golden notebook of the title.
In tracking Anna's psychological movements--her recollections of her years in Africa, her relationship with her best friend, Molly, her travails with men, her disillusionment with the Party, the tidal pull of motherhood--Lessing pinpoints the pulse of a generation of women who were waiting to see what their postwar hopes would bring them. What arrived was unprecedented freedom, but with that freedom came unprecedented confusion. Lessing herself said in a 1994 interview: "I say fiction is better than telling the truth. Because the point about life is that it's a mess, isn't it? It hasn't got any shape except for you're born and you die."
The Golden Notebook suffers from certain weaknesses, among them giving rather simplistic, overblown illustrations to the phrase "a good man is hard to find" in the form of an endless parade of weak, selfish men. But it still has the capacity to fill emotional voids with the great rushes of feeling it details. Perhaps this is because it embodies one of Anna's own revelations: "I've been forced to acknowledge that the flashes of genuine art are all out of deep, suddenly stark, undisguiseable private emotion. Even in translation there is no mistaking these lightning flashes of genuine personal feeling." It seems that Lessing, like Anna when she decides to abandon her notebooks for the single, golden one, attempted to put all of herself in one book. --Melanie Rehak
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Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780007498772
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 576. Seller Inventory # 58037880
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. The landmark novel by Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing a powerful account of a woman searching for her personal, political and professional identity while facing rejection and betrayal. Anna Wulf is a young novelist with writers block. Divorced, with a young child, and disillusioned by unsatisfactory relationships, she feels her life is falling apart. Fearing the onset of madness, she records her experiences in four coloured notebooks. The black notebook addresses her problems as a writer; the red her political life; the yellow her relationships and emotions; and the blue becomes a diary of everyday events. But it is the fifth notebook the Golden Notebook which is the key to her recovery and renaissance.Bold and illuminating, fusing sex, politics, madness and motherhood, The Golden Notebook is at once a wry and perceptive portrait of the intellectual and moral climate of the 1950s a society on the brink of feminism and a powerful and revealing account of a woman searching for her own personal and political identity. The landmark novel of the Sixties a powerful account of a woman searching for her personal, political and professional identity while facing rejection and betrayal. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780007498772
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780007498772
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. The landmark novel of the Sixties - a powerful account of a woman searching for her personal, political and professional identity while facing rejection and betrayal. Seller Inventory # B9780007498772
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 576 pages. 7.87x5.12x1.38 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0007498772
Book Description Condition: New. 2014. paperback. The landmark novel of the Sixties - a powerful account of a woman searching for her personal, political and professional identity while facing rejection and betrayal. Num Pages: 576 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 152 x 200 x 36. Weight in Grams: 396. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780007498772