H.W.'s Reviews > The Golden Notebook

This is the TL;DR version, for a full review see my fullreview
This longish novel by Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing is known as an important feminist work, and that's why I decided to read it. However, Lessing's intent was to approach a number of other important subjects, primarily fragmentation of the mind and of society. She certainly swung for the fences; the number of subjects she touches on are too many to mention without driving readers away. The scope of the novel is wide-ranging; so are the settings and characters: Wikipedia notes 31 characters, all of whom are fully described, fully animated. The two focal points are the protagonist's early life in Africa during the War (WWII) to her post-war life as a single mother (and Free Woman) in London.

So, how is it to read? I found it odd and intensely detailed, often for reasons which are obscure to the reader until much later. The characterizations are superb, as are descriptions.

The reader realizes by the end that most of these intense passages have purpose. For example, in the early part of the book Lessing presents in excruciating detail characters and descriptions that, so well presented, become imprinted on the reader's memory. The depth to which she impresses these memories on the reader serves to reflect the protagonist's remembering of them 450 pages later, when Lessing flits across certain images from those early days as Anna's mind becomes unmoored. That later passage would never have been so powerful if Lessing had skimped on the Africa section early in the book.

The writing is often odd. Lessing latches on to certain mechanics and runs with them for a time, then discards and seems to forget them. Examples are a focus on comic books (pages 273 and 310) when writing of certain children, never to mention it again, the use of 'I I I I' --"I, I, I, I, like a machinegun ejaculating regularly" (p. 537) in the description of Anna's relationship with Saul and nowhere else. There is a lot of narrative 'telling' especially around page 150, that strikes me as odd, accompanied by passive voice. That technique gets ten pages of treatment and does not return.

The structure of the story, which switches from third-person Anna-and-her friends to first person 'notebooks'--diaries, really, and there are 4 of them--is not so radical any more. It would have been in 1962, when the book was published, and she did an amazing job with the structure. She also, via the diary presentation, switches up how the diaries are used, what is written in them from narrative to short fictions (pp 455 - 463) which serve both to highlight the essential conflicts concerning Lessing (love, relationships, male privilege, and dysfunction) and also show the reader Lessing's incredible breadth as a writer.

Oddest of all is the ending. I found it a false ending, that Lessing signaled with an almost throwaway air to it, like she parodied the 'happy ending' of popular fiction. It is a repeat of the previous section in which Lessing takes 150 pages to illuminate the struggle and disorientation of two people, both on the verge of insanity, in love and in conflict.

BOTTOM LINE: This was an important book to finish. I cannot say I enjoyed it all the time, but I appreciated it, and met the end with a feeling of clarity which escaped me most of the way through. The depictions were superb, the writing usually superb, with some odd passages where things got wonky. Lessing achieved the communication of 'her experience.' That is the essence of art.