The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing

ISBN 10: 0060975903 / ISBN 13: 9780060975906

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1994

About this Item

One of the most important books of the growing feminist movement of the 1950s, it was brought to a wider public by the Nobel Prize award to Doris Lessing in 2007. Authoress Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer's block by writing a comprehensive 'golden notebook' which draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook: sources of her creative inspiration in a black book, communism in a red book, the breakdown of her marriage in a yellow book, and day-to-day emotions and dreams in a black book. Anna's struggle to unify the various strands of her life - emotional, political and professional amasses into a fascinating encyclopaedia of the female experience in the '50s. In this authentic, taboo-breaking novel Lessing brings the plight of women's lives, from obscurity behind closed doors, into broad daylight. A true modern classic which has been meaningful and resonant to a great many women, The Golden Notebook is deserved of its reputation.

Seller Inventory # CIN0060975903A

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Golden Notebook
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060975903
• ISBN 13: 9780060975906
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

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 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 personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer, threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

Review

A feminist landmark, this big, ambitious novel tells the story of writer Anna Wulf and the crises she faces in her personal, political and professional life. Confounded by writer's block, the ferociously independent Wulf explores her situation in four notebooks, one for each of the strands in her life; the golden one is the one in which, struggling to retain her sanity, she brings these strands together.