Much to its author's chagrin, The Golden Notebook instantly became a staple of the feminist movement when it was published in 1962. Doris Lessing's novel deconstructs the life of Anna Wulf, a sometime-Communist and a deeply leftist writer living in postwar London with her small daughter. Anna is battling writer's block, and, it often seems, the damaging chaos of life itself. The elements that made the book remarkable when it first appeared--extremely candid sexual and psychological descriptions of its characters and a fractured, postmodern structure--are no longer shocking. Nevertheless, The Golden Notebook has retained a great deal of power, chiefly due to its often brutal honesty and the sheer variation and sweep of its prose.

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 tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

Introduction 1993

Introduction 1971

FREE WOMEN: 1

Anna meets her friend Molly in the summer of1957 after a separation

THE NOTEBOOKS

FREE WOMEN: 2

Two visits, some telephone calls and a tragedy

THE NOTEBOOKS

FREE WOMEN: 3

Tommy adjusts himself to being blind while the older people try to help him

THE NOTEBOOKS

FREE WOMEN: 4

Anna and Molly influence Tommy, for the better.

Marion leaves Richard. Anna does not feel herself

THE NOTEBOOKS

THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK

FREE WOMEN: 5

Molly gets married and Anna has an affair

About Doris Lessing