The experiences of two women provide the framework for this intense literary study of liberated womanhood

I read this book many years ago and all I remembered about it was that it was all about communism.

Now I've attempted to read it again and didn’t notice the communism so much.

There are two friends, Anna og Molly, who live in London. Anna writes some notebooks and what follows in the book is one of them.

Later in the book we are told about a small group of members of “The Party”. Everything takes place in Africa, the “colony”

Lessing goes into extreme detail about all the members of the little Communist group.

Though the book is interesting, it all got too much for me and I abandoned it.

I would recommend it to readers who like Lessing’s style and love of detail and have time and patience to wade through this big book. ( )

Published in 1962, this book is a character study of Anna Wulf, a divorced writer with a young daughter living in London in the 1950s. She keeps five notebooks. The black notebook documents her time in Southern Rhodesia before and during WWII, which inspired her successful first novel. The red notebook recounts her membership in the Communist Party, and her growing disillusion with it. The yellow notebook is an attempt to write a second novel based on a failed relationship. The blue is her personal diary. The titular golden notebook is Anna’s attempt to bring the other four together into one cohesive whole.

Excerpts from the notebooks are interspersed with segments called Free Women, which relate the lives of Anna, her friend Molly, their families, and relationship partners. It is a mix of autobiography, news clippings of the time period, and novels within a novel. It is written in a looping style, alternating segments from the different colored notebooks. Anna is attempting to compartmentalize her life. She is on the edge of mental instability and suffers from writer’s block.

I liked parts of this book and found other parts annoying. Anna’s mental struggles are moving. I especially appreciated her discussions with her therapist. The writing is elegant. There are several keen observations about human nature. Certain sections of the notebooks are engaging and memorable. I can understand why this is considered a literary classic, but…

I did not care for the repetition, which is part and parcel of the looping structure. I got tired of spending so much time in the head of a person that keeps engaging in self-destructive behavior. It appears to celebrate female independence, but the protagonist keeps getting involved in a series of unhealthy relationships. It would have helped if there had been something to lighten the mood. Parts of it have not aged well (e.g., the conversation about “real men.”) It eventually becomes unpleasant, and I was ready for it to end well before it did.
( )

this book was inspiring and exciting and tedious and frustrating and, in the end, too long. but its tendency to actually brighten the world around me in myriad ways earns it four stars. i would warn that its men-focused feminism grates a little these days, but with some simple realigning of expectations it is easy to see how groundbreaking this must have been. ( )

“What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.”

Anna Wulf is a divorced single mother, former communist and one time successful author living in London in the late 1950’s. Anna’s marriage had been brief and lacked any emotional intimacy but had produced a daughter for which she is thankful. Anna has had other relationships since her divorce, invariably with married men, which never last.

Anna wrote a best-selling novel called 'Frontiers of War' based on her time in Colonial Africa during WWII and is centred around a group of young, white, idealists. The proceeds from the book has enabled Anna to buy a house in London for her daughter and herself with room for a tenant. When her daughter decides that she wants to go off to boarding school Anna's days lose their structure. Meanwhile, the proceeds from her novel, her main means of financial support, are drying up and unable to get past her crippling writer's block Anna fears that she is slowly sinking and losing her mind.

Anna has only one close friend; Molly, a minor actress who like Anna is a single mother and a former Communist. Like Anna Molly is supporting herself and her son using the fickle income of an artist. Unlike Anna Molly is still in touch with her child's father but this only causes rancour as the two parents constantly bicker over how the child, a teenage boy, is being brought up. Anna is often the go-between for them, a further source of stress that she doesn't need.

'The Golden Notebook' is quite conceptual in its writing style and is told with a shattered narrative making this quite a difficult read. We read the story of Anna in two main forms. The first is a fairly standard third-person novella called 'Free Women' which is divided into five parts. The second is a first-person narration by Anna that comes in the form of her notebooks – she has four of them. In the black notebook she writes about her writing life, in the red notebook about her political life, in the yellow notebook about her ‘emotional life’ and in the blue notebook about everyday events. Essentially, Anna’s note keeping is a form of self-therapy.

Like Anna, at the time of writing, Lessing was also a divorced single mother, a disillusioned communist, and the writer of a best-selling first novel set in Colonial Africa during WWII (The Grass is Singing) meaning that this novel is largely autobiographical. Lessing is adamant that she did not set out to write a ‘feminist’ novel yet Anna and Molly are two
women who enjoy a certain sense of liberty, certainly compared to previous generations, yet still feel trapped and do not enjoy the same freedoms as men. Both are single mothers whom married men see as likely mistresses rather than anything more permanent.

After about 50 pages I was about ready to throw in the towel and give up, I felt that it was boring. But I persevered and even on completion I'm still unsure whether or not I made the right decision.

I became quite invested in the story of 'Ella and Paul' (found in the black notebook) but had to remind myself that they are ‘fictional’ since they are characters in Anna's published novel. This in turn made me question what of 'Free Women' should I trust? Nor did I particularly enjoy the segments in the blue notebook where Anna slips into stream-of-consciousness. There are some very fine passages but I found it patchwork, complex and confusing. I also have to ask whether or not this novel has aged well or was it very much of its time? Not only has the political situation moved on but I like to think that female emancipation has too but then maybe I'm simply the wrong sex. ( )