The Golden Notebook

Did nobody think to tell me about Doris Lessing? The name had a familiar ring, the kind of sound a name gets when it's called great, but only ever in the middle of a list of other great names. I can't really understand how I made it this far without somebody insisting I read this book.

The setup is ostensibly simple: semi-autobiographical protagonist Anna is an author and an active leftist in 30s, 40s Britain. She keeps four notebooks simultaneously, each for different strains of thought and experience. One is in the form of a draft for a novel, based on her own life.

At the bottom of the spiral you have Ella, a writer character in a fiction that is written by Anna, a writer character that is written by Doris Lessing — the writer character who existed in the same world as you and I. Each writer reflects on the story unfolding and about what of themselves they're putting into their characters, and what their characters are showing them about themselves.

So yes, it's a book about writers writing, and it's no surprise I should like that kind of thing if executed well. But it's also the proof of this idea... that the form of the novel was invented to depict the internal life, to depict subtle psychologies that aren't discernible in other forms. The level of detail and the extent to which I believe these women are real and complex — it goes beyond anything I've ever found in another novel.