A Ripple From the Storm (Children of Violence) [Paperback]

Doris Lessing (Author)

Book Description

Series: Children of Violence | Publication Date: September 1, 1995

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 political adventures in race-torn British Africa, following Martha through World War II, a grotesque second marriage, and an excursion into Communism. This wise and starling novel perceptively reveals the paradoxes, passions, and ironies rooted in the life of twentieth-century Anglo-Africa.

A Ripple from the Storm is the third novel in Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence sequence of novels, each a masterpiece in its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"She is a mature ad valuable artist, adventurous in the mysteries of daily life, thoughtful, passionate, true." -- -- Stanley Kauffmann

"Absorbing reading...Lessing conveys [with great clarity] the emotions, aspirations and constant self-questing of Martha Quest, her most powerful character." -- Sunday Times (London)

"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

"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

"She is a mature ad valuable artist, adventurous in the mysteries of daily life, thoughtful, passionate, true." -- Stanley Kauffmann

"There can't, I suppose , be anyone left who reads modern fiction at all and isn't aware of the importance of Doris Lessing's work...Lessing knows just what she is doing and a real, densely imagined, completely credible world emerges." -- John Wain, Observer

About the Author

Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the most celebrated and distinguished writers of our time. She lives in north London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060976640
• ISBN-13: 978-0060976644
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #710,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the story of a ripple, September 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Ripple From the Storm (Children of Violence) (Paperback)

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).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So few reviews for such a great book, December 9, 2003

By 

"junglelove" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Ripple from the Storm (Hardcover)

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!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Ripple From the Storm by Doris Lessing, July 9, 2009

By 

scott89119 "scott89119" (Whittier, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Ripple From the Storm (Children of Violence) (Paperback)

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.