The Golden Notebook  (English, Paperback, Lessing Doris)

Flipkart Official Review

“The Golden Notebook” by Doris Lessing is in the true sense, the quintessential so-called feminist novel. Having said that, there is absolutely no negative connotation to it. This book was written and published at a time, when the movement was at its height and perhaps much needed even today.

Anna Wulf is divorced and lives alone with her child. She is a writer who is now facing a major writer’s block. She fears that she will lose her mental faculties and decides to keep different notebooks for different purposes. The black one is for her professional life. Red is but obviously the political one (Maoism and Communist values were at their peak then). Yellow for all relationships and Blue for everyday events. It is the Golden Notebook which is the unique one.

The book touches on everything about the 50s and what it stood for – racial politics, sex, feminism, speaking out and coming out of the shadows. Lessing’s writing shimmers on almost every single page. A true genius.

Description 

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

Doris Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.