A Ripple from the Storm

by Doris Lessing and Doris Lessing Children of Violence

Book Overview

Doris Lessing, of all the postwar English novelists, is the foremost creative descendant of that great tradition' which includes George Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. -- New York Times Book Review

Martha Quest, the embodied heroine of the Children of Violence series, has been acclaimed as one of the greatest fictional creations in the English language. In a Ripple from the Storm, Doris Lessing charts Martha Quest's personal and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060976640
• ISBN13: 9780060976644
• Release Date: September 1995
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Ripple From the Storm by Doris Lessing

Martha Quest's adult life continues in Lessing's third volume in her massive Children of Violence series. This volume focuses on Martha's sense of self doubt, and her attempt to get self-actualization through becoming further involved in Communist politics. As such, the majority of this book is dedicated to her learning all she can about her Communist Party, and it becoming an encroaching presence in her life. Whereas the first two books in the series can be read as stand alone, with this one the reader is in for a much deeper and rewarding experience if they had read the two books beforehand. There is a whole new cast of characters, but only through knowing about Martha's journey to get there can you understand her motivations as she turns increasingly inward and makes a second unfortunate marriage. The story itself is rather dry- especially since it follows the absorbing A Proper Marriage- and is mainly dedicated to a political movement that is predominantly marginalized these days. It is slightly forgettable, and only leaves an afterthought of a group of intellectuals arguing about stale political concepts in a swelteringly hot room. Still though, it is part of a series that should be mandatory reading for fans of literature, and tales of Martha's maturity with Lessing's typical sophistication.

This woman!, I've named my daughter after her: DORIS

This woman!, I've named my daughter after her: DORIS

So few reviews for such a great book

Trying to understand the mid-20th century? Race relations, facism, colonials, communism, sexual politics? Take a ride with Doris Lessing through her strange and fictional small town in southern Africa. This was probably my favorite book of the Children of Violence series, perhaps because in it, Martha actually takes some action. Admittedly, she and her friends are running around like rabbits and will never accomplish anything substantial in the field of race relations, but they're trying, desperately, as they marry the latest currents in European liberal thinking to the absurdities of colonial life. Steal this book!

the story of a ripple

Lessing presents us here to a third (or forth) phase in the life of Martha Quest, a white woman in "Zambezia", a colonialist state in Africa. "children of violence" which consists the present book is a highly recommended series as a whole, but the whole is to be differentiated as the fifth book belongs to a different genre if to any existing one. the former books, this one included, on the other hand, make an important contribution to female bildungsroman, as Lessing tells us with what i heard to be a tone of apology, in the end of the fifth book. "a ripple in the storm", specifically, suggest some more categories. it faces us with a small comunist group in "Zambezia" through world war 2 which implies all the domain of questions from justice to power in its external and internal spheres, to the state of an individual inside a storm. the story is rich, clever, subtle. it leads us to the continuance of changing and growing of Martha (the author seems to hold a certain popular enough judgement of comunism as something to grow of personally and historically, though not without retaining something of it). it leads us there as if by ourselves. it's not that you want to be or feel yourself to be Martha, actually Martha is half hidden - to herself too - in the turbulence of activity, this is part of the story. it is that you can imagine your shade appearing there in the little rooms. another point,one gets a sad description of the status of women in an example of an ideologically egalitarian organization. this fact is made clear thoroghly by description. one might believe the author doesn't even know this fact (but of course, one shouldn't).