A Jest Of God - Margaret Laurence

'Rachel- is it serious?'...
So that's it. I ought to have seen. She's wondering- what will become of me? That's what everyone goes through life wondering, probably, the one absorbing anguish. What will become of me? Me.'

Rachel Cameron, thirty-four and unmarried, is trapped by the stifling conventionality of small-town Canadian life as a shy, retiring schoolmistress and dependable helpmeet to her coy and overbearing invalid mother. Desperate for love and companionship, she risks all in an affair with a man for whom sex and love are more trivial matters- and it changes Rachel's life in unforseen ways. First published in 1966, this is the second of Margaret Lawrence's famous Manakawa series of novels, and a powerful exploration of loneliness, desire and the pain of disappointment.