The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

As I was reading this book, relatives commented "not exactly light reading", which hadn't occurred to me, to divide novels into light and heavy. But now that I think of it, you could definitely calll this book heavy; the atmosphere of recollection, dissillusionment, and the struggle to keep on... keep both sanity and honesty and all that other difficult stuff.

Anna is an ironically self-described "free" woman with writer's block. She is free because she, and her best-friend, have lived most of their adult lives unattached to a husband. This just locks them into other roles with men - mistress, mother, bitch - which are painfully and accurately described. Anna keeps differaent notebooks, which we read also. In this way themes emerge, merge, mix, and foretell of eachother in a very cool way. Anna is trying to write a novel, based on part of her past. In another notebook she keeps her insights and notes on world politics, another contains her recollections of her life in South Africa, while the fourth notebook is an attempt to keep a personal diary.

In her introduction to the book, Lessing writes that she has had people respond to The Golden Notebook as a novel about Communist politics, while others have raved about her feminist insight. It is possible to grab onto certain aspects of the book and relate, while maybe others have no particular relation to your own experience. It is a big complex synthesis of one woman's experience over a short period of her life. It is excellently written, cleverly stiched together, and yes, kind of heavy mostly because it all rings true. The ideas expressed are chunky. This woman (do I mean Lessing or Anna?) is not just an expert at her craft, she's smart, aware and mature. Poor thing, how much more badly equipped for this world can one soul be?

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