Doris Lessing 
Proper Marriage 

The second book in the Nobel Prize for Literature winner s Children of Violence series tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in colonial Africa to old age in post-nuclear Britain. A Proper Marriage sees twenty-something Martha beginning to realise that her marriage has been a terrible mistake. Already the first passionate flush of matrimony has begun to fade; sensuality has become dulled by habit, blissful motherhood now seems no more than a tiresome chore. Caught up in a maelstrom of a world war she can no longer ignore, Martha s political consciousness begins to dawn, and, seizing independence for the first time, she chooses to make her life her own.