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Book Summary (from the back cover): Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life … In a yellow one, she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook. Characters:
Setting: London UK Time Period: 1957 is the present day in the Free Women sections. The notebooks start in the early 1950s. The events in the Black notebook happen in the early 1940s during the Second World War. Title: The Golden Notebook refers to the integration of all of Anna's parts (that she used to keep separate in the Blue, Yellow, Red, and Black notebooks) into a unified whole. Viewpoint: Anna (or Ella) in third-person, sometimes Anna in first-person. Free Women 1: pages 1-53 "Anna meets her friend Molly in the summer of 1957 after a separation." (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) In 1957 London, Anna visits Molly at the flat that Molly shares with her 20 year-old son Tommy. Molly has been gone a year, drifting through Europe. Now Anna is supposed to fill her in on the gossip. These two women are single mothers, activists, and creative types. They're also members of the British Communist Party, and they've been in psychoanalysis for years with a German lady they call Mother Sugar. Anna is a writer; Molly is an actress who dances and paints. Molly's ex-husband Richard, a business tycoon, shows up to discuss the future of their son Tommy. Tommy makes a brief appearance to refuse a job in Richard's corporation. He says he doesn't want to be like either of his parents, and then asks if he can live off his mother for awhile and try to be a writer. He leaves and the talk turns to Richard's unhappy marriage with his new wife Marion who drinks too much because she feels unloved and unfulfilled. Molly and Anna mock Richard and give him advice. It comes out that Richard made a pass at Anna who refused him. He leaves. Anna and Molly almost start arguing about Anna's writing; it's very important to Molly that Anna keep producing. Anna tries to confide in Molly about her growing disillusionment with life rather than taking a tough so-what attitude like they, as liberated women, are supposed to do. Molly brushes her off, and Anna drops the subject and leaves. Back home in her own flat, she takes out her four notebooks, the Yellow and the Black and the Red and the Blue, and puts them on her desk. |
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Noteworthy Links: Wonderquest - Science Q/A! The Connection - Tech blog! Author site - John the Eunuch Historical Mystery series, Cozy Mystery List for all your cozy mystery needs, Obsidian Bookshelf - reviews of gay-themed fiction. |
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