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Golden Notebook
 
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Golden Notebook (Paperback)


3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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5 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1.0 out of 5 stars Pleasure reading shouldn't be this painful :-0, Jan 17 2002
By C. Sullivan "2boyzmom" (Beaverton, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I bought this book 2 years ago - almost to the day...I have the receipt stuck in the book...I can only seem to force myself to get to page 50 and then I just can't stomach anymore and I put it down for 2 more years. Maybe this is a piece of art. Something to be treasured and something that should change your life. But pleasure reading shouldn't be this painful. I wish the store would take it back - but I think I've probably had it for too long.
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5.0 out of 5 stars All the Amazing Notes, Mar 27 2001
By Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
The Golden Notebook is Lessing's most well known of her works and with good reason. It is an incredibly complex and layered work that addresses such ideas as authorship of one's life, the political climate of the 60s and the power relation between the sexes. It would be naïve to consider this novel as just a feminist polemic. I know many people have read it only this way or not read it because they assume it is only this. Lessing articulates this point well in her introduction. The novel inhabits many worlds of thought. It just so happens that at the time of its publication it was a very poignant work for feminism. More than any book I know it has the deepest and longest meditation on what it means to split your identity into categories because you can not conceive of yourself as whole in the present climate of society and in viewing your own interactions with people. This obsession with constructing a comprehensive sense of identity leads to an infinite fictionalisation of the protagonist's life. Consider the following passage "I looked at her, and thought: That's my child, my flesh and blood. But I couldn't feel it. She said again: 'Play, mummy.' I moved wooden bricks for a house, but like a machine. Making myself perform every movement. I could see myself sitting on the floor, the picture of a 'young mother playing with her little girl.' Like a film shot, or a photograph." She can't attach her own vision of herself to the reality of her life. The two are separated by the ideologies of society which influence her own vision of who she should be.

This novel also captures the political climate of the era, a state of post-war disillusionment with the available models political ideology. They recognise the need for some kind of change, but are unable to envision a model that will work. Opinion is split into infinite personal categories of what government should become. Unfortunately, for all these good things which this novel intelligently discusses, it also has its own shortcomings that the reader should be aware of. Its representation of homosexuality is very limited. It has the unfortunate tendency to envision homosexuality as an idea of being rather than an actual state of being. No doubt, this was influenced at the time it was written by the meaning of being 'a gay' as being strongly attached to one's political position. The state of being a homosexual is inextricably attached to the misogynist vision of what femininity should be when it is actually something a bit more complex than that. Though Lessing is able to see through many misconceptions of her era such as the hypocritical actions of people who claimed to be fighting against racism while reinforcing racial divisions, the novel falls a bit short in other areas. Nevertheless, this doesn't prevent it from being a very powerful and enjoyable novel to read.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The Book that Changed Me. Absolutely superb!, Nov 24 2000
This book has to be read to be understood. I can say that this is the best book I have ever read. It is a book on the twists of human soul, communism, being a single mother, being a woman in 1960s, being a sensitive human, friendship, love, resentment, breakdown, breakthrough...It changed me forever.
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book. Let it change you.
Future generations will call this the most important novel of the 20th century, or at least they should, for this is the book that expresses the major themes of the world in that... Read more
Published on Jan 26 2000 by actaeon@gateway.net

2.0 out of 5 stars Extremely overrated
I had tried so hard to plow my way through this book. I read and reread and printed reviews and pep talked myself... Read more
Published on Nov 1 1999

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