Jim Brown reviewed The golden notebook by Doris Lessing (Harper Perennial modern classics)
what gets left out
Not so sure what to say about this one or what to think about it. It's long, and at times tedious, but it's also really interesting. It offers a picture of both the cynicism and hope embedded in socialist and communist circles during the middle 20th Century. It also is very focused on the act of "naming"...and how that act pins things down, "buttons them up," and sometimes even gives relief.
A novel about the process of writing a novel, about translating experience into something else, and about how that act of translation will always leave something out.