Set in 1957 at the height of the Cold War, Anna Wulf is a single mother as well as a novelist with writer's block.
Her life is falling apart. She records her experiences in four coloured notebooks. The black notebook records her writer's life, the red notebook expresses her political views, the yellow notebook records her emotional life and the blue notebook records every day events. But it is the golden notebook that brings the strands of her life together.