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From the Back Cover
'SHE LOOKED ACROSS THE FIELD TO THE DUMFRIES HILLS AND RE-FASHIONED THAT UNUSED COUNTRY TO THE SCALE OF HER IMAGINATION. THERE AROSE, OVER THE HARSH SCRUB AND THE STUNTED TREES, A NOBLE CITY, SET FOURSQUARE AND COLONNADED, ITS CITIZENS GRAVE AND BEAUTIFUL, BLACK AND WHITE TOGETHER.'
The 'Children of Violence' series, a quintet of novels tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in Africa to a post-nuclear Britain of AD 2000, first established Doris Lessing as a great radical writer. In this first volume, Martha, the young rebellious daughter of a white family, finds her coming of age to be a great struggle for freedom and recognition. Intelligent and deeply compassionate, she sees the unpalatable political and social realities of her world with an extraordinary clarity. Martha's vision of a just society takes her beyond the impoverished and rigid farming community to the city – an ill-matched marriage her means of escape…
“Stubborn, resilient, wry towards herself, Martha is Doris Lessing's most satisfying and complex characterisation. She is a child of her times, of violence, who "could no more dissociate herself from the violence done by her than a tadpole can live out of water"”
THE TIMES
“With deceptive simplicity, Doris Lessing reveals more about the private depths of the mind and soul than perhaps one ought to know”
DAILY TELEGRAPH
“'Martha Quest' is a deeply felt and powerfully written account of a modern woman's progress.”
SUNDAY TIMES
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"As of the ladies, they sometimes allowed their eyes to rest on the girl with that glazed look which excludes a third person, or even dropped their voices; and at these moments, she lifted her head to give them a glare of positive contempt; for they were se" Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
This is a superb novel and makes for compulsive reading. There is much truth that can be taken from the book, and I highly recommend it: especially for all those who know that sometimes it can be hard to find your place in the world.
The novel focuses on the story of a young British girl, Martha Quest, growing up in pre-World War II South Africa. The writer captures what it means to be a poor, white woman growing up in a country profoundly divided by racism and injustice through the novel's uniquely shrewed and frequently sulky young "heroine". Lessing's novel shows brilliantly how the personal is political and how the political intrudes on every sphere of the characters' lives. In addition, Lessing is a master at invoking a sense of place and at bringing to life a- fortunately- bygone era.
I'm one of these Lessing fans from back in the day when _The Golden Notebook_ changed my life, and I haven't read much of her other work. I was impressed by Martha Quest-- it falls in the category of our classic coming-of-age novels, and as such stands well on its own as a novel. Lessing's Martha is at times so frustrating you want to shake her, but I think that's typical for the age of the character portrayed. Martha is all sharp edges-- she can't seem to fit with her parents, the men around her, the people with whom she tries to interact. With the blindness of her age, she's able to acutely feel how hard she has it, without really feeling the struggle of others around her who may have an even more difficult time. By turns infuriating and attractive, it can be painful to read Quest's story precisely because so it's so human as to be disturbingly familiar.
A should-read book.
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