Season 26 of the Two Month Review: "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing

We're back with the 2007 Nobel Prize winner

In the last episode of the 25th season of the Two Month Review, we unveiled the next three seasons of the program, which will take us right into October and featured three absolute bangers. If you want to know what seasons 27 & 28 will be, you’ll have to listen to that episode, but for now, you can find all the details about season 26 below, which is featuring The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing.

Here’s the jacket copy:

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, her disillusionment with communism. 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 resolves to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.

This one was chosen by Kaija Straumanis, specifically because she started it and immediately wanted to talk about it on the podcast given the richness of the text and the book’s fascinating structure.

The impulse to want to discuss and share this book is one that I think a lot of readers have had, and in fact, back in 2008, if:book London and Apt—with the support of the Arts Council England—organized an online reading group for The Golden Notebook to explore the idea of how book communities could exist in this new era. (Bob Stein wrote an incredible piece about “The Taxonomy of Social Reading” and this specific project for the Future of the Book which is definitely worth reading.) It was a fascinating project, and one that we’ll likely refer to over the course of the podcast, given that the seven women who participated are all brilliant writers and thinkers.

In terms of Lessing herself, she was born in 1919, spent her early life in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) before relocating to London, won the Nobel Prize in 2007, and passed away in 2013. She was involved with the Communist Party of Great Britain for a while and was involved in various protests movements—especially against apartheid, which got her banned from Rhodesia and South Africa—and went through a number of phases in her writing life, from a more realistic form (The Grass Is Singing), to more politically conscious fiction (The Golden Notebook, the “Children of Violence” series), to science fiction (the “Canopus in Argos: Archives” series).

Across the course of her 57 year career, she wrote 26 novels (my favorites include The Grass Is Singing, Briefing for a Descent into Hell, The Good Terrorist, The Fifth Child, and, obviously, The Golden Notebook, and I’ve been meaning to read the two series for ages now, but haven’t found the time), alongside more than a dozen story collections.

She’s a legendary writer, and if you haven’t read The Golden Notebook, you should join us—this season is going to be extremely interesting in terms of talking about structure, communism, feminism, and great big books written by women.

Here’s the complete reading schedule, corresponding to the dates in which the podcast version will be posted. All episodes are posted here, so you’ll get them all in your inbox. But you can also subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

All pages numbers are from the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition of the book, so I’ve tried to designate the ending point for anyone reading the UK edition (or any other one with different pagination).

April 24: Pages 1–80 (this is the only episode that ends in the middle of a chapter)

May 1: Pages 81–159 (up to “Jean Barker. Wife of minor Party official.)

May 8: Pages 159–242 (up to “Free Women: 2”)

May 15: Pages 243-292 (up to “The Shadow of the Third”)

May 22: Pages 292–352 (up to “Free Women: 3”)

May 29: Pages 353–417 (up to “Came to know the young American writer James Schafter.”)

June 5: Pages 417–482 (up to “Free Women: 4”)

June 12: Pages 483–580 (up to “The Golden Notebook”)

June 19: End

We’ll be back next week with the first episode!!