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Doris Lessing

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Martha Quest: A Novel (Children of Violence Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Doris Lessing (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 122 ratings

Book 1 of 5: Children of Violence

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"I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do." — Barbara Kingsolver

Intelligent, sensitive, and fiercely passionate, Martha Quest is a young woman living on a farm in Africa, feeling her way through the torments of adolescence and early womanhood. She is a romantic idealistic in revolt against the puritan snobbery of her parents, trying to live to the full with every nerve, emotion, and instinct laid bare to experience. For her, this is a time of solitary reading daydreams, dancing — and the first disturbing encounters with sex. The first of Doris Lessing's timeless Children of Violence novels, Martha Quest is an endearing masterpiece.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do." — Barbara Kingsolver

"A formidable talent." — C. P. Snow

"For sheer poise I don't think there has been a writer to touch her since Jane Austen." — John Wain, Observer

"Stubborn, resilient, wry towards herself, Martha is Doris Lessing's most satisfying and complex characterization. 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." — Times (London)

"There are many notable descriptions of adolescent boys and young men in our fiction. There are very few, in the same deep and radical sense, of young women. Mrs. Lessing's study of Martha Quest is one of them." — New York Times Book Review

From the Back Cover

Intelligent, sensitive, and fiercely passionate, Martha Quest is a young woman living on a farm in Africa, feeling her way through the torments of adolescence and early womanhood. She is a romantic idealistic in revolt against the puritan snobbery of her parents, trying to live to the full with every nerve, emotion, and instinct laid bare to experience. For her, this is a time of solitary reading daydreams, dancing -- and the first disturbing encounters with sex. The first of Doris Lessing's timeless Children of Violence novels, Martha Quest is an endearing masterpiece.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002ZJCQPG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins e-books (December 2, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 2, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 506 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 340 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #958,034 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,665 in Psychological Literary Fiction
- #4,382 in Women's Literary Fiction
- #7,688 in Contemporary Literary Fiction

Customer Reviews:
4.1 122 ratings

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Doris Lessing

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Doris May Lessing CH (née Tayler; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).

Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Elke Wetzig (elya) (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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4.1 out of 5

122 global ratings

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Sara J Roe

Lessing's Lessons Resonate

Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2018

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I've lately been re-reading all of Lessing's works, and am enjoying the experience enormously.

I first began reading her about 15 years ago, and I find that the older I get, the more prescient she seems (although that has little to do with this particular work), and I'm struck by her ruthless willingness to confront the highly uncomfortable facts of her own life, and her ability to create such fully formed characters that the reader attains such a level of intimacy with them that they seem wondrously alive, and events of 80 years ago seem immediate.

As a voracious reader, I seldom revisit authors once I have exhausted their oeuvre, but Lessing draws me back. If you've never read her, Martha Quest is a good place to start, and I challenge any reader to come away from Lessing unchanged.

4 people found this helpful

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scott89119

Martha Quest by Doris Lessing

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2009

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Martha Quest is the first novel in Doris Lessing's massive Children of Violence series, which cumulatively consists of five books and 2,100+ pages. Because of the breadth of the series as a whole, the first book here acts as a general introduction, and can be frustrating to read simply because it isn't a complete story in and of itself. We get to know Ms Quest, where she comes from and what she wants out of life, but little more. The heavily autobiographical protagonist leaves her childhood farm, moves into a busier city, lolls away at a job, goes to nighttime party after party, dates a few different men, gets caught up what an assorted group of friends, becomes more perceptive at the different social classes around her, and marries a somewhat mysterious man at the end. This is all in pretty general brushstrokes, and a reader may not find much interesting here, and Quest not a particularly appealing character. Trust me, stick with it and you will find Ms Quest to be as interesting and fully-formed as anyone you have ever met. This is a lukewarm gateway to an incredibly impressive series of novels.

2 people found this helpful

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Geraldine Sonnesso

Not Compelling

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2009

The style of writing was compelling with many wonderfully descriptive paragraphs, but the protagonist wasn't all that interesting a character. In fact, none of the characters are fully fleshed-out. Lessing seems a bit detached from her characters in spite of the fact that this book parallels her own life.

2 people found this helpful

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Allan Kelly

Martha Quest

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2014

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I grew up in a colonial African country and thought Doris Lessing captured the atmosphere of those times very well. I first read Martha Quest in the 1980s and remembered it as good. Now that I have read it again 30 years later I realise it is far better than good. Martha is a very real heroine - a young girl from a conservative racist background who inclines instinctively to a more liberal view yet lacks the knowledge and the sophistication to articulate this. Her youthful anger and frustration and rebellion against her roots is described beautifully as is the boorish juvenile racism of the young men at the sports club. My revisiting of this book taught me that while many of our faculties decline with age our ability to appreciate and understand literature just grows and grows.

7 people found this helpful

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Jiang Xueqin

Beautiful Writing

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2015

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Doris Lessing writes so well that her prose is like music, and she has such a natural and easy grasp of the violent emotions that control and betray our better selves. "Martha Quest" is her semi-biographical depiction of a young and sensitive woman coming of age in a racist patriarchy -- just as her political conscious is about to be awaken she succumbs to the social pressures swirling around her and the personal anxieties that haunt from within her.

Compared with "The Grass is Singing," "Martha Quest" is a lesser work, but it is still worth a read if only for its rhapsodical prose.

2 people found this helpful

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Big Ed

A late discovery of a brilliant mind

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2013

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Having never read Lessing until this book, I was immediately in recognition of her genius. As with Faulkner, Wharton and Wolff, her ability to freeze a moment in time and delve into the complexities and perceptions that comprise a life is remarkable, enlightening and far more intriguing than a whodunit. This, for me, will be the summer of Doris Lessing.

One person found this helpful

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honesty

moulding characters

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2014

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Anyone who wants to see fully developed and moulded characters, and who can visualize society at the time in which the book is written, would love any of Doris Lessings' books. She slowly develops characters over a period of time and does so with such skill that it reveals far more than a photo would.

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Wayne in Maine

A perfect blend of the personal and the political

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2022

An early work by this great writer, but already displays the intellectual and emotional depth of later books. Brings you right into the time period (the world on the brink of a second World War), the culture (a British colony in southern African, and the life-stage of the protagonist (a teenage girl struggling with separating from her conservative parents, with figuring out how to find a fulfilling lifestyle, with figuring out her beliefs about the issues of the day including racism, socialism, and sexual liberation). Lessing doesn't allow Martha or the reader any easy solutions, however. Wonderfully done, and there are 4 more volumes in the series!

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Mrs P M Mitchell

A book to read and reread

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2014

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Here's a book I have read before, as all Doris Lessing's fiction. An early novel, dealing with an expatriate British family living in south Africa in genteel poverty, and a study in teenage angst. It tells of the rebellious feelings of Martha, and how she deals with her situation and her escape from the restrictions of her family's mores.
The first of a series of tales of Martha, and of South Africa and the Apartheid system, and the political situation there, it is a powerful depiction of the expatriate life.
I would recommend it to anybody interested in the history of Southern Africa, or in the study of families and their interaction, and attitudes to those around them

4 people found this helpful

Beatriz

Muy buen producto.

Reviewed in Spain on November 22, 2018

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El libro está en perfecto estado.

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S'Abba Druche

Re-reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2013

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I read the series of books of which this is the first one for the first time when I was 22 in the 1970s. I was completely captivated by them and went on to read many more books by Doris Lessing. Recently I started re-reading them, something I have never done with a book, because I remembered how important they were to me then. Interestingly this time I am not so emotionally involved with the story, perhaps because I am no longer around the same age as the protagonist Martha Quest. I 'see' much more in the writing though perhaps because I am more critically aware as a reader and also more mature as a person. I understand more of the psychological depth and can see that these books are the author's recounting of and reflecting upon her younger experience (although not an autobiography, there are certainly autobiographical similarities with her own life), her thinking, her emotions, her life choices. When I read Martha Quest the first time I would have given it 5 stars. Now I give it 4, perhaps because nowadays fiction has moved on and there are many more people writing in psychologically adept ways, with inventive structures and so forth and this book no longer stands out in such a stellar fashion as it did. Or maybe I am just older.

8 people found this helpful

yvonne hughes

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2017

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Doris Lessing is always a pleasure to read.

LILLY GRAHAM

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 30, 2014

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