The Golden Notebook, Dorris Lessing

Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is a wonderfully bold book charting, amongst other important events and cultural/social changes, the freedom of women.

Free to have careers, sex and their own opinions it is set during the evolutionary stage of female emancipation that we, women of today, can relate to even though the book is set from the 1930s onwards.  This was a groundbreaking novel when it was published in 1962 and I would say it still strikes a chord today.  I’m not going to go into the plot, characters and story in this blog post but I loved the conversations and debates in the book and I loved the journey of the central characters especially due to their flaws, it made them more fictionally human.

My copy of the book had a long preface written by Doris Lessing and even that was a delight to read. It had the quality of feeling like personal advice from a much loved mentor though of course, most of us never met this formidable writer formerly residing discreetly in West Hampstead until her death in November 2013. If you are interesting in writing I would recommend this book for its wonderful format and style, it is truly unique.

If you’d prefer it as your book at bedtime here is a link to listen to a serialised version of The Golden Notebook on BBC Sounds.

I’d love to read what you think of it.  It is said to be a book that described an entire generation, do you agree?