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

Product 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.

This novel also captures the political climate of the era, a state of post-war disillusionment with the available models political ideology. They recognise the need for some kind of change, but are unable to envision a model that will work. Opinion is split into infinite personal categories of what government should become. Unfortunately, for all these good things which this novel intelligently discusses, it also has its own shortcomings that the reader should be aware of. Its representation of homosexuality is very limited. It has the unfortunate tendency to envision homosexuality as an idea of being rather than an actual state of being. No doubt, this was influenced at the time it was written by the meaning of being `a gay' as being strongly attached to one's political position. The state of being a homosexual is inextricably attached to the misogynist vision of what femininity should be when it is actually something a bit more complex than that. Though Lessing is able to see through many misconceptions of her era such as the hypocritical actions of people who claimed to be fighting against racism while reinforcing racial divisions, the novel falls a bit short in other areas. Nevertheless, this doesn't prevent it from being a very powerful and enjoyable novel to read.


An interesting mess of a novel   June 23, 2005
 36 out of 45 found this review helpful

Intellectual energy is always a healthy attribute for a writer of fiction. Doris Lessing, an incredibly prolific author who has covered many different genres, has plenty; but her early novel "The Golden Notebook" too often sacrifices coherence and focus for ineffective artistic experimentation. That it doesn't have much of a plot is not a deficiency, because many great modern novels have discarded the notion of a necessity for a conventional plot; rather, its narrative power is diminished by Lessing's apparent indecisiveness about the kind of tale she wishes to tell. In one section she writes synopses of about two dozen short stories in quick succession, and we have to wonder why we're looking at blueprints instead of the finished product.

Summarily, "The Golden Notebook" is a work of fiction about the erratic process of writing fiction, and it problematically attempts to intertwine several novels into one. The main story is that of Lessing's alter ego Anna Wulf, who compiles her memoirs, blending the real with the fictional, into four color-coded notebooks of which the contents are revealed in an alternating fashion. Anna, a rising literary star who has published an acclaimed novel called "Frontiers of War" based loosely on her experiences and her circle of friends in Rhodesia where she lived during World War II, now resides in England with her young daughter Janet, drawing income from gradually dwindling royalties while being courted by philistine film producers who propose to adapt and warp her novel for the screen.

Love and sexuality play major roles throughout the multiple narratives, but "The Golden Notebook" is neither sentimental enough to be a romantic novel nor cynical enough to be a satire. Anna's relationships with a string of men, from her ex-husband Max, a German refugee whom she met in Africa, to an aimless American expatriate named Saul, are the basis of her fictional life; she has created an alter ego of her own named Ella, a struggling novelist who has numerous affairs almost exclusively with married men, to be used possibly as the heroine of a new novel. She can be maternal as well, not just to her daughter but also to her older friend Molly's son Tommy, a restless and discontented youth who is forced to endure the physical aftermath of a botched suicide attempt.

A central feature of "The Golden Notebook" is the changing course of Anna's political outlook which begins in Rhodesia. Her abhorrence of the "color bar"--the racist policies of white European colonists towards blacks--in southern Africa and her observations of the poverty of the workers steered her towards Communism. As it turns out, the British Communists with whom she associates are a muddled and disorganized group, inveterate liars and prevaricators with utopian delusions; but Anna's eventual decision to leave them arises more from her disenchantment with their attitude that art should be used only for political purposes and not to express personal ideas or emotions. This is anathema to a creative writer such as Anna, as it should be; "The Golden Notebook" is Lessing's defiant response to that dictum.

Were I to describe "The Golden Notebook" accurately as remarkably original, uniquely structured, overflowing with a multitude of literary thoughts, and driven by fascinating impulses, you might think it a book worth reading; but in fact I hesitate to recommend it to anybody but an avowed Lessing fan. When Saul asks Anna why she keeps four separate notebooks, she answers that "...it's been necessary to split [her]self up," and therein lies the trouble--the reader is made to suffer for Anna's narrative schizophrenia. I am unsure whether "The Golden Notebook," so energetic but so disjointed, is too much or not enough of whatever it is that it wants to be, but it is definitely not the correct amount.




Read this book. Let it change you.   January 26, 2000
 28 out of 34 found this review helpful

Future generations will call this the most important novel of the 20th century, or at least they should, for this is the book that expresses the major themes of the world in that century. What we now call gender issues (now there's a broad label!) occupy a major portion of the novel, but it is just as much a picture of the Fear of humanity during the Cold War times, when every day we were 30 minutes from doomsday. It is about racism and colonialism and the fading of empire; it is about the breakdown of society in the technological age; it is about single mothers; it is about mental states and breakdowns. It is about Communism, and have we not heard the 20th century called the Age of Communism? All this is not what makes this a great novel. Each time I've reread it, the more it seemed I could almost put my finger on something-a question of identity, or what it means to be human. "Breakdown" is a word appearing throughout the novel-by the end, it almost seems to mean "break through": break through the rhetoric, break through the categories. The Golden Notebook speaks to deep emotions-something there is that needs to shine through, to grow, to love and to be loved. This novel reached down to that. It is sometimes painful, sometimes provoking a fear/hate reaction, or a feeling of dislocation. This is the kind of book that you often have to slap down on the table, pace the room, and work off the tension that has built. Doris Lessing wrote once that she considered this novel something of a failure, for it only names the issues, exploring briefly, but not solving. I can see what she means-this is a novel that forces the reader to wrestle with themselves as much as the characters. This is why some people read the novel and yawn, and why some read the novel and are profoundly changed. One must be at a crossroads, unsettled. Read this book. Let it change you.


The insufferable Anna Wulf   June 9, 2006
 20 out of 24 found this review helpful

Like many other reviewers, I struggled with this book. For more than 600 pages, Anna Wulf explores every thought and emotion that comes into her head and tries to make sense out of her life. This might be an interesting book for fiction writers, who might understand the elaborate process Anna goes through to create characters and combine her life with her art. But for the average reader, this is just too much and too long.

I am very patient with novels. Perhaps too patient, because I should have put this one down sooner. I got all the way to page 500 before I realized I just couldn't go on. And it's quite depressing to invest so much time in a book and then put it down. Doris Lessing says herself that no one should force themselves to read a book they are not connecting with. I should have taken her advice sooner. But while some books you might not just be 'ready' for, I don't think I will ever be ready for this one.

It's disappointing because I am a Doris Lessing fan. The Four-Gated City explores many of the same themes - an emotional breakdown can be constructive in order to build yourself back up whole and understand the world around you. Anna Wulf did have a fragmented mind, as demonstrated through her keeping of four separate notebooks. She was kept together by the routines of her life, such as making breakfast for her daughter. When she didn't have anything constructive to do, she thought herself to death. And if you read this book, you'll likely be right there with her - going crazy.


Pleasure reading shouldn't be this painful :-0   January 18, 2002
 17 out of 55 found this review helpful

I bought this book 2 years ago - almost to the day...I have the receipt stuck in the book...I can only seem to force myself to get to page 50 and then I just can't stomach anymore and I put it down for 2 more years. Maybe this is a piece of art. Something to be treasured and something that should change your life. But pleasure reading shouldn't be this painful. I wish the store would take it back - but I think I've probably had it for too long.