Written by Doris Lessing
Read by Norma West
Format: MP3
Bitrate: Variable


1 Martha Quest

Read By: Norma West

Duration: 12:23

Description

Martha Quest is a young girl living on a farm in Africa, feeling her way through the torments of adolescence and early womanhood to marriage. She is a romantic idealist in revolt against the puritan snobbery of her parents, trying to live life to the full with every nerve, emotion and instinct bared to experience. For her, this is a time of solitary reading, daydreams, dancing, and the first disturbing encounters with sex.


2 A Proper Marriage

Read By: Norma West

Duration: 16:40

Description

Martha, now in her early 20s realises that her marriage to Douglas is a terrible mistake; sensuality is dulled by habit and motherhood has become a chore. Caught up in the maelstrom of a war she can no longer ignore, her political conscience dawns and, seizing independence for the first time, she chooses to make her life her own.

3 A Ripple from the Storm

Read By: Norma West

Duration: 12:10

Description

Martha Quest, now free of her stultifying marriage to Douglas, is able to pursue the independent life she has wanted for so long. Her deepening involvement with revolutionary politics draws her into a world of fierce commitments and passionate idealism. A time of great change, Martha's young womanhood brings not only immense happiness when she embarks on an affair with a fellow party member, but also great sorrow, for the pain of abandoning her baby daughter, left at home with Douglas, never diminishes.

4 Landlocked

Reader: Norma West

Duration: 12:45

Description

The second world war comes to an end as Martha's life in Africa becomes increasingly disillusioned and unhappy. Estranged from her second husband, Anton, frustrated by her country's insoluble politics of class and colour and the failures of the left wing to which she has devoted so much time, she gradually and painfully realises the need for change. Ambitious and hopeful, determined to be happy, she prepares to leave for England and a new life.

5 The Four gated City

Read By: Norma West

Duration: 29:30

Description

Martha, now middle aged, leaves Africa for post war London, shedding her two marriages, her daughter and her political past. As housekeeper to the Coldridge family, she watches the children in her care, the new "children of violence", grow up in a disintegrating world, a world careering towards the century's end towards nuclear disaster.