The Grauniad celebrates a half-century of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook by asking various writers what they think of it.  The book is appalling, and one hopes will be forgotten before another half-century elapses. 

In her earlier novels and subsequently, Lessing is one of the best writers in English of any century – gripping narratives, superbly-judged choices of words, inviting and compelling voices, and a sharp observational intelligence.    The Golden Notebook, however, is our Doris off her game.  Self-indulgent, overly-long, poorly-structured, apparently unedited, it is a mis-mash of different stuff that looks as if it were put down once in a hurry and then, it seems,  never re-read. 

To this reader, the book appears as some random ideas for a novel, or perhaps several, which were never reworked coherently:   Clip some jottings together, put a cover on them, and call it post-modern –  that should work.   If art really is the doing of all things with artlessness, as Piet Hein once said*, then this book lacks even an attempt to be artful, as if the author was taking the michael, or worse.

* FOOTNOTE:

There is but one art,
No more, no less:
To do all things
With artlessness.