From the original review of The Golden Notebook in the Tucson Daily Citizen by John Barkham, June 1962:  Doris Lessing has long impressed as an underrated novelist. Her stories of southern Africa, The Grass is Singing, and of lower-class English life in Five, combine form with expression in a manner perfectly suited to the respective environments.

The Golden Notebook is far and away her most ambitious work to date — a long and complex novel which draws on all the talents and insights of this gifted woman.

It is no ordinary work of fiction, either in manner or matter. The publisher compares its heroine, Anna, with the “new woman” of Ibsen and Shaw. This is going further than I would, but unquestionably The Golden Notebook is going to be debated and analyzed by students of the novel for a long time to come. Read More→