Martha Quest: A Coming-of-Age Classic in Colonial Africa – First Children of Violence Novel

Doris Lessing not only show great courage to write about issues that subsequently made her an outcast in her country, but she showed amazing skill at giving different perspectives to serious issues in a very fluid and believable manner. Excellent read!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

One of Doris Lessing's easier books. It's a coming of age story somewhat reflecting her own youth. I thought I he ending kind of sudden but gave it 5 stars for her excellent writing quality.

El libro está en perfecto estado.

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

Well, what a book! It was a bit tricky as I really did not like Martha Quest. Or her parents. Or some of their friends! It's of it's time, but bit by bit I was sucked it and then couldn't put it down. I shall read the rest of the "Children of Violence" series, and I hope they will be the same - difficult and challenging reads.

Doris Lessing is always a pleasure to read.

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.