The golden notebook by Doris Lessing
I read The golden notebook during my (still ongoing) vacation. I wanted to read something by the recent Nobel prize.
This story is about Anna Wulf, a single mother in her thirties who wrote a successful novel a few years back, is a communist, and seems to be suffering a breakdown. It is constructed around novel sequences called 'Free Women' where Anna is one of the main protagonists and excerpts from notebooks Anna is writing: the black notebook is about her writing, the red one about her political thoughts, the yellow one about her love life, the blue one about day to day life. It is only when she starts writing in the golden notebook that she makes a recovery.
I was not disappointed. This book has many layers. It can be read as a book about women (and the feminists read it that way), but it is also about being a communist in the 1950s, when the crimes of Stalin are finally getting known, and about suffering from mental troubles. The structure of the book is really excellent and I read Lessing telling how difficult it had been for her to write it from A to Z as she intended it to be. I specially liked her descriptions of Africa where Anna spent the years of WW2. I could feel Lessing's attachment to the Rhodesia where she grew up. I was not blown away by her style, however, not like when Roth's sentences awe me. And I guess everything she was radical for back in 1962 is now totally mainstream or at least not scandalous as they were (single women having love affairs, gay relationships, women rights, the dream gone bad that ended up being communism, etc.). I guess I am too young to fully appreciate the power of her radicalism.
This story is about Anna Wulf, a single mother in her thirties who wrote a successful novel a few years back, is a communist, and seems to be suffering a breakdown. It is constructed around novel sequences called 'Free Women' where Anna is one of the main protagonists and excerpts from notebooks Anna is writing: the black notebook is about her writing, the red one about her political thoughts, the yellow one about her love life, the blue one about day to day life. It is only when she starts writing in the golden notebook that she makes a recovery.
I was not disappointed. This book has many layers. It can be read as a book about women (and the feminists read it that way), but it is also about being a communist in the 1950s, when the crimes of Stalin are finally getting known, and about suffering from mental troubles. The structure of the book is really excellent and I read Lessing telling how difficult it had been for her to write it from A to Z as she intended it to be. I specially liked her descriptions of Africa where Anna spent the years of WW2. I could feel Lessing's attachment to the Rhodesia where she grew up. I was not blown away by her style, however, not like when Roth's sentences awe me. And I guess everything she was radical for back in 1962 is now totally mainstream or at least not scandalous as they were (single women having love affairs, gay relationships, women rights, the dream gone bad that ended up being communism, etc.). I guess I am too young to fully appreciate the power of her radicalism.