Lessing clearly experiments with the traditional forms of the genre with this novel by offering a somewhat fragmented narrative. Although the notebooks are written during a seven-year period, chronologically the reader must sort out not only the linear pattern but also Anna's life from the fictional life of her creations, such as Ella, and the recounting of an earlier time period of her life, when she lived in Africa. The events of Anna's life are not only divided into the four notebooks, but are also interspersed with her fictional writing, including her published novel Frontiers of War and the later beginnings of a short novel about an Algerian soldier that Saul completes.

Lessing's skill is great enough to indicate how attempts to dissect and label and organize all perceptions into an orderly fashion will fail. Repeatedly, entries in Anna's notebooks indicate necessary infiltration between notebooks and the resulting...