The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

[mmack]

I was really enjoying this book up until the point when she met Saul. I like the Anna and Molly characters and loved the parts set in Africa. I liked the novel within a novel as well. But now that she has met Saul and started describing all her dreams I just want to throw the book across the room. I will finish it but I hope it ends on a more positive note.

It's years since I've read it. I keep meaning to read it again someday. I agree that Lessing's writings on Africa are really interesting, and perhaps her best books (such as the Martha Quest series) are those set in Rhodesia.

I find Lessing a fascinating character - a brilliant novelist but a very difficult human being. I've started reading the London Review of Books recently and Jenny Diski, who lived with her as a teenager, wrote an article which gives a good insight into the kind of person Lessing was:

www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n01/jenny-diski/doris-and-me

I realise this is slightly off-topic, but worth a read if you're interested in Lessing the person.

Thanks for the link. I didn't really know anything at all about Doris Lessing before today. I just read the introduction to The Golden Notebook and I can't believe that she left school at 14. I also didn't realise she was banned from South Africa for her stance on apartheid. She is totally fascinating.
I did like the very last section of The Golden Notebook-I like that Anna suffered but survived. I've ordered The Grass is Singing from the library and I'm looking forward to her autobiographies too.

Oh The Grass is Singing is a fantastic book. The title's wonderful, too - yet another TS Eliot line that's used as a title.

The autobiographies are fascinating, mmack - she had such an interesting life! But I could never quite understand how she was able to walk out on her two small children - something she doesn't go into a lot of detail about.

I just finished The Grass is Singing. It's a great book and it seems so modern. I can't get my head around the fact that it was published 65 years ago. It's amazing and totally admirable that she was writing so critically about apartheid in the late 40s. I'm going to read The Fifth Child next. I think I'll enjoy the autobiographies more if I've read a selection of her fiction first.

I loved The Grass is Singing