Although it can be read and fully enjoyed as a separate novel, A Proper Marriage does in effect carry on the story which Doris Lessing began so promisingly in Martha Quest. In that novel Martha, then in her mid-teens, left the South African farm on which she was brought up to seek the excitement and experience she craved in 'the big city'. Although rapidly disillusioned, she was inescapable drawn into the hectic life of the smart set and soon found herself married.

A Proper Marriage shows how Martha's rebellious temperament reacted to her new life. We read of her growing discontent with the young married set to which she and her husband Douglas now belong; of the arrival of her baby, which seems another threat to her freedom; of the outbreak of war and Douglas's departure with the army; and later, of the hard decision she has to make about their life together.

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© Nuria Soler Pérez, 2001