This was not love at first sight. My immediate first thought: “Christ, it’s going to take me the rest of the year to read that!” First impression: “Seemingly ok story, charmingly kitsch, writing ok, but not as good as I was expecting from the exceptional pen of Doris Lessing…”
No, this was not love at first sight. But then true love rarely is. Having finished it I feel lost, abandoned, heartbroken. Like being in a love affair that’s reached its inevitable yet bitter end. I can’t even look at another book at the minute. Not in any serious light, anyway. I’m reading a Terry Pratchett, but it doesn't mean anything, it’s just for fun…
I don’t know when it happened. One moment it was just my latest read, the next I was cornering people at parties and spouting about politics and women and love and relationships and many more of the topics covered in this novel. No, Lessing was not aiming at too many elements when she refused to pick a definite theme, because people deal with all of these emotions all the time, over and over and all at once; they don’t separate one out and create the story of their lives with just that one. Although Lessing’s main character tries:
Writer of the bestselling novel, Frontiers of War, Anna swears she’ll never write again. A single mother from a failed marriage, she lives off the royalties from her book and volunteers at the CP office while life passes her by. This life she records in four different books: the black notebook, a report of her earlier years in Africa; the red notebook, an account of her communist views, her association with the reds and finally her doubts; in the yellow notebook she writes fiction: a short story about a character called Ella, who’s life is so similar to her own, it’s hard, at times, to differentiate between the two, and a list of short story ideas; and in the blue notebook she writes a diary of sorts, an account of her psychoanalysis sessions and of her musings on life. Finally, losing her grip on sanity, she attempts to bring the hub of each together in one golden notebook.
Each of the notebooks is essential to both reader and character. Each one adds depth to Anna, explains who she is and why. The red notebook gives a foundation for her opinions. The black notebook shows her history, the blue its effects on her present life. The yellow notebook shows what she thinks of herself: Ella is Anna, but weaker, less vital, more foolish, everything that Anna considers herself, fictionalised and emphasised. The story of Anna and the story of Ella are deeply entwined, but only in terms of reality versus the story, and not within her own diary and the story.
When the story of Ella “finishes”, Anna continues writing in the yellow notebook; noting story ideas, which give us, as readers, a stark insight into what is going through her mind and what is happening in her life. As a writer, this device fascinated me: I have a notebook for ideas and jottings myself and it never occurred to me that a stranger could find anything out about me through reading it and yet it is more revealing than any diary. And I found that the whole book had this way of making me review myself over and over, like holding up a mirror.
I could wax lyrical for pages and pages about how each thought I’ve ever had is right there in that book and how I didn’t just read it, I lived it, and am still living it; how Lessing seems to touch something. That’s all I can say, really; that above all else, this book touches the v.core of female semantic thought.
It is books like this that make me suspect that I’ve been a little too generous when giving out stars in the past so this to me remains as starless as it is priceless!
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