THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK by Doris Lessing >> How is this the first Lessing I've ever read??

Whether you love this iconic, culty, groundbreaking novel or you don't get the hype; whether you believe it's a feminist treatise or a meditation on the promise and the shortfalls of communism, you'll finish this lecture feeling like you've gotten some SERIOUS LITERATURE under your belt. If you haven't read this 1962 phenomenon--or haven't for a while--this lecture is a good (re)introduction to why the unique structure and radical candor about everything from motherhood to post-War politics in Southern Rhodesia, to the difference between the clitoral and vaginal orgasm (at least in Lessing's [somewhat hilarious and highly suspect] opinion) make this worth its 600+ pages.