Get to Know the Notebook

As I've mentioned before, I'm reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, and it's a richly rewarding read. In one of her introductions the author mentions that most commentators at the time of publication (1962) would choose one or another of the novel's facets and act as if that one facet were the whole novel. The book has many facets; it's deliciously saturated with close observations of gender relations, of Marxist disillusionment, etc. The fact that any lucid reader could possibly be so reductionist as to overlook the richness of this novel is a peculiar commentary on the human desire to simplify matters. The Golden Notebook is my kind of novel: brainy, but a page turner.