The Golden Notebook
By Doris Lessing

At an early point in this novel, Lessing's heroine, Anna, says that she wishes she could write "a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life." That's as good a way as any to describe this book and its effect on me—but it's also a genuinely involving and surprisingly enjoyable read, especially given that it is by a writer with almost no sense of humor. There was a time when I believed that any modern woman had to read The Golden Notebook, but I'm no longer given to pronouncements that are quite so doctrinaire.