The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing

About this Item

About this Item First American edition of the Nobel Prize winning author's magnum opus. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by the author on the half-title page. Fine in a very good dustjacket dust jacket wear on dust jacket, also worn on top and bottom of spine on dustjacket.Price clipped on bottom right of dustjacket. Pages are crisp and corners are sharp. Jacket design by Janet Halverson. "I looked at her, and thought: That's my child, my flesh and blood. But I couldn't feel it. She said again: `Play, mummy.' I moved wooden bricks for a house, but like a machine. Making myself perform every movement. I could see myself sitting on the floor, the picture of a `young mother playing with her little girl.' Like a film shot, or a photograph." These words exemplify the themes Lessing struggled with in The Golden Notebook. They question the notion of identity. In the above quote, the protagonist cannot reconcile who she needs to be, to remain healthy and whole, with what the ideologies of society require her to be. This obsession with constructing a comprehensive sense of identity leads to an infinite fictionalization of the protagonist's life. Lessing's work is not only a significant feminist polemic; it is a multilayered glance into the political climate of the 1960's.

Seller Inventory # 127

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Golden Notebook
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)