Ebook The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing
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The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing
Ebook The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing
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Amazon.com Review
The married couple in this novel pull off a remarkable achievement: They purchase a three-story house with oodles of bedrooms, and, on a middle-class income, in the '70s, fill it to the brim with happy children and visiting relatives. Their holiday gatherings are sumptuous celebrations of life and togetherness. And then the fifth child arrives. He's just a child--he's not supernatural. But is he really human? This is an elegantly written tale that the New York Times called "a horror story of maternity and the nightmare of social collapse . . . a moral fable of the genre that includes Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and George Orwell's 1984."
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From Publishers Weekly
A smug, conservative couple's fifth child (after four model children) inspires fear and horror. "The implications of this slim, gripping work are ominous," wrote PW. Lessing indicts those in authority who refuse to acknowledge responsibility for the violence inherent in mankind. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Product details
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (May 14, 1989)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679721827
ISBN-13: 978-0679721826
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.3 out of 5 stars
150 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#135,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is a horror story. And it's the most chilling, goosebump-inducing kind. There is no blood. No gore. No killers lurking in dark alleys with sharp knives at the ready. Oh no, none of that. This horror story by Doris Lessing plays with your psyche.David and Harriet are incredibly happy. They marry for love. They both want a big family--eight or more kids! They get busy and produce four in quick succession. As the reality of caring for their lovely brood hits them hard, they decide to slow down, but get pregnant with No. 5 unexpectedly.And the fifth child is...peculiar. Is he really human? Or is he a primitive man, some kind of throwback from an oddball gene? Ben's birth disrupts this happy family and sends them on a downward spiral that is truly horrifying in its ramifications.The sequel to Lessing's "The Fifth Child" is "Ben, In the World," and I have snapped it up to keep reading the story. Both are short, fast reads.
This book gave me the creeps. A friend told me it was science fiction - I prefer to think of it as a gothic horror story. A couple already have four seemingly perfect children. Mother gets pregnant again, and has lots of problems with the pregnancy: The baby is very active, large, and she is constantly ill, can't sleep, and is exhausted. Once born, mother cannot bond with the child, a boy they call Ben. He is a vicious nurser, and a very physically precocious child. However, his language skills are poor and he can't relate to anyone. He doesn't play with the other children, and is often aggressive. As he ages, there are lots of problems, some quite disturbing: He is physically unattractive. Eventually, it gets so bad they have to take him out of school. At one point, the family places Ben in an institution. The mother's guilt is heart-breaking. It gets worse from there. Her eventual rescue of Ben is vivid, and the "home" is beyond words. Ben's reappearance leads tragically to the disintegration of the family. What the mother eventually decides really took me by surprise - it's almost shocking. Lessing's writing style is compulsively readable and visual, even when the subject is uncomfortable, like this one.
This story borders on horror genre, or maybe fantasy, though in my opinion it's not quite there because the child is just inside of what's believable. You don't have to suspend your belief to let the tale carry you along. A couple aspects are, to me, at least as striking as the child itself. First is the dedication of the mother. She's a little too saintly to be real. We all know the strength of a mother's love, but every human mother is in the end, merely human. This mother would put Mother Theresa of Calcutta in the shade. Also, the heavenly bliss surrounding the family until the fifth child is born is a tad saccharin, but it's portrayal is saved by its setting the stage for what follows. The preternatural bliss of the family at the beginning degenerating into the hellish horror of their world after the arrival of the fifth child is what makes the story so compelling. But it's not just the story itself, which to my experience is unique, but it's well told. It would be difficult to find fault with Lessing's use of the language. My final comment: the story has no resolution worthy of the term, which in most instances would render it intolerable, at least to me. But here it somehow works. The story just sort of turns to dust and smoke and drifts off into the sunset, yet for some reason I found it very satisfying. Yes, I recommend the book to anyone who takes storytelling seriously.
Once again Doris Lessing reveals that she is a master of storytelling. I really appreciate how she lets character develop as a result of action and circumstances. This is a disturbing novel but not really a horror story as some may have described it. It is the story of family and friends, the social fabric of life, and how the entry of something unexpected, challenging, dark and maybe even evil may unravel and tear that fabric. The unexpected may make some family members draw closer and others to draw away. This is the story of a large extended family with strong social bonds and family values are challenged by the birth of a child that is almost Neanderthal and certainly dangerous. A young married couple wishes to have a large family of 8 children and live in a large Victorian mansion but the dream becomes a nightmare when the fifth child is born and all bets are off and all relationships become ambiguous. I would love to see a good film-maker take this short novel and turn it into a motion picture. It is not supernatural, like Rosemary's Baby, but is more subtle as it explores what we do and don't know about those we love and are closest to us in our lives. When a child, such as Ben, enters a family, it is totally realistic to propose that one parent, the mother, is totally focused on this odd child while the other parent, the father, is more concerned with the well being of the other four older children. Both are noble instincts yet this clash of values may subtly undermine a marriage. On a larger scale, this very short novel (which can be read in 4 hours) is a parable about any unexpected life event that may tear the social fabric of our lives. Thus, the evil child Ben, could have been a proxy for mental illness, or domestic violence, or cancer, or a host of challenges that enter our lives and redefine us and pull us toward some loved ones and push us from others. This is an excellent book that is highly recommended.
the sad story of a child born who is unlike everyone else. His self centered, unrealistic parents. For me the book was more about the irresponsible parents than about the unique child they had. I left immensely dislikeing the parents and feeling very sorry for the child who didn't fit in.
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