The Information
by Martin Amis | 
Coming Up for Air
by George Orwell | 
Cakes and Ale
by W. Somerset Maugham | 
The Bell
by Iris Murdoch | 
A Severed Head
by Iris Murdoch | 
Under the Net
by Iris Murdoch | 
The Sea, the Sea
by Iris Murdoch | 
The Old Wives' Tale
by Arnold Bennett | 
Crome Yellow
by Aldous Huxley | 
The Magus
by John Fowles | 
A Maggot
by John Fowles | 
Waterland
by Graham Swift | 
The Longest Journey
by E. M. Forster | 
The Death of the Heart
by Elizabeth Bowen | 
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
by George Orwell | 
The Awakening
by Kate Chopin | 
The Women's Room
by Marilyn French | 
Fear of Flying
by Erica Jong | 
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath | 
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck |
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 year. 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 reviles part of her own experience. And in the blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.