Book description
This is the second volume in Doris Lessing's renowned quartet of novels
tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in Africa to an
imagined post-nuclear Britain.
A Proper Marriage sees twenty-something Martha beginning to realise
that her marriage has been a terrible mistake. Already the first
passionate flush of matrimony has begun to fade; sensuality has become
dulled by habit, blissful motherhood now seems no more than a tiresome
chore. Caught up in a maelstrom of a world war she can no longer ignore,
Martha's political consciousness begins to dawn, and, seizing
independence for the first time, she chooses to make her life her own.
'Few writers spring such surprises as Doris Lessing. She trusts her own
feelings absolutely, and has the rare power of putting feelings straight
onto the page, more directly perhaps than any other writer, so directly
that the effect is sometimes like a physical blow.' Independent
'A writer of real importance, Doris Lessing knows where to start and
where to stop, knowledge which most writers take a lifetime to acquire.' Spectator
'The “Children of Violence” series gives an astounding compression of a
total, coherent vision, as if Doris Lessing knew all along where it
would end.' The Times Doris Lessing was the winner of the 2007 Nobel
Prize for Literature and is one of the most important writers of the
second half of the twentieth century. Her first novel, 'The Grass is
Singing' was published in 1950, and since then her international
reputation has flourished. Among her other celebrated novels are 'The
Golden Notebook', 'The Summer Before the Dark', and 'Memoirs of a
Survivor'. Her most recent works include two volumes of autobiography,
'Under my Skin' and 'Walking in the Shade', her most recent novel is
'The Cleft'.
