This chapter-by-chapter summary contains plot spoilers!

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Navigate the Summary Parts: Part 1: Molly & Anna talk Part 2:  Rhodesia Part 3: Recruiting voters Part 4: Tommy's accident Part 5: The producers Part 6: Comrade Ted's excellent adventure Part 7:  Anna's detailed day Part 8:  Tommy recovers Part 9:  Pigeon pie Part 10: Psychoanalysis Part 11: Nightmare Part 12:  A toxic party Part 13: Anna talks to Tommy Part 14: Black, Red, and Yellow notebooks end. Part 15:  Saul Green arrives Part 16: Anna and Saul have sex Part 17:  Anna and Saul argue Part 18: Anna reads Saul's diary Part 19: Anna and Saul go nuts Part 20:  Blue Notebook ends. Part 21: the Golden Notebook Part 22: conclusion

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing: Pages 530 – 537

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Blue Notebook: (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Anna wakes up the next morning, feeling tense with apprehension. She realizes that she's suffering an anxiety attack, but can't pin down why. A friend Jane calls for Saul Green.  Anna puts down the telephone and goes to his room to knock, and summon him to the phone.

When he doesn't answer, Anna goes inside and sees him sleeping, curled up tightly underneath the sheet.  She puts her hand on his shoulder and is shocked at how cold and inert he is.  He wakes up terrified, and puts his arms around her neck for an instant.  Then he stumbles out to pick up the phone, leaving her with a deadly chill to her palms. 

As the next few evenings pass and Anna spends time with Saul, she experiences several jarring moments with him that she realizes are fueling her growing sense of anxiety. He will be chatting with her about something innocuous, and then something in the way she reacts to him or in the questions she asks him will provoke sudden defensive hostility.  Yet she's drawn to the flashes of kindness or perceptiveness that he shows.  This jarring contrast within Saul makes her increasingly nervous.

They talk about sex, and she points out that he always speaks passively about it, referring to having sex as "getting laid." She also scolds him about the male tendency to reduce women to names like broad, bird, lay, baby, doll, and to describe women only through their body parts such as breasts, boobs, and butt.  He says, "Do you imagine I don't know that men blame women for their inadequacies?" This wins her over. 

They talk about politics.  Anna learns that Saul was a Communist and then got kicked out of the Party for being "prematurely anti-Stalinist." Then he went to work in Hollywood as a writer, but found himself blacklisted for being a Red.  Anna notes that the difference between Saul and countless other former Communists whom she's known who have been through this situation is that he isn't bitter about it.

Anna and Saul finally get it on, and she thinks to herself that she's forgotten how nifty it can be to make love to a real man.  She's happy and he's relaxed for about a week, and then he cooly ignores her one night and goes to his room to be alone.  The next morning, they are both tense and miserable at breakfast. That afternoon, Saul shows up and "makes love to" Anna in this overly self-conscious way as if he's decided he needs to be in control.  She goes along with it, but doesn't find herself enjoying it.

The next night, he comes to her room for sex and Anna knows he's just come from sleeping with another woman. She accuses him, and he seems to turn into three different men: one who lies to defend his freedom and denies her accusation, one who pleads with her in the next breath to realize that it "doesn't mean anything", and a third who tells her in a friendly voice to just go to sleep. In response, she seems to turn into three different Annas: a miserable one who feels betrayed, a sarcastic one who sits back in detachment, and an obedient child who obeys the suggestion to go to sleep.
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