Product Description

A self-satisfied couple intent on raising a happy family is shocked by the birth of an abnormal and brutal fifth child.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69566 in Books
• Published on: 1989-05-14
• Released on: 1989-05-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780679721826
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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."

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.

From Library Journal
Mildly eccentric English couple Harriet and David Lovatt are the contented parents of four healthy children. Suddenly, their peace is forever shattered by their fifth child, Ben, a fiercely malevolent goblin-child with a penchant for violence. It is suggested that Ben is a throwback to earlier, precivilized time, that he represents a random settling of neanderthal-like genes that all humans carry. Only Harriet tries to civilize the boy, and he gradually learns to function on a primitive level and even collects a band of similar outcasts about him. Unwanted, they leave their homes to wander England like modern-day troglodytes. Society's complicity with their fate is a reflection of its callousness. Not major Lessing but sensitive and strangely compelling nevertheless. Laurence Hull, Cannon Memorial Lib., Concord, N.C.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Lessing again turns the ordinary into the extraordinary
I was surprised to find the "experts" listing "The Fifth Child" in a horror category. This is Lessing as we have come to know her style of bringing you into the characters' lives quickly. You find yourself passing judgements alongside the fictional characters. Though the book starts as a dream of being different by upholding the traditional values of family, it quickly turns into an understanding of the dynamics of family and friends who, facing an unknown, turn their backs and pass judgement on a loving couple who soon turn their backs on each other to preserve each one's value system. A family torn apart by what is considered the "curse" of the fifth child to this family who wanted children to the rafters, is a family you can identify with. A discovery into the heart of human, and perhaps "un-human" experiences of dear Mother Nature. I read it in an afternoon and wanted more.

The Fifth Child
This book is one of the most thought provoking books I've ever read. It really made me think about my own family and also about other people's family values.
Doris May Lessing was most diffinately put a moral into this story that over the course of the book is hard to figure out but in the end is very clear. I believe the book is really about society and how it turns away and tries to forget about the abnormal or strange.
I loved the way Doris May Lessing wrote this book. It is written in a very straight forward way. If this book has any flaws, it is the lack of character development.
I would recomend this book but I'm not sure to who.

A thought-provoking book
Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child" will be loved by some and hated by others, but it's hard to be ambivalent about a book that evokes such strong emotions in its readers. The premise of the book--how family, friends, and distant relatives deal with the birth of Ben, the fifth child of David and Harriet Lovatt--is soon overshadowed by the reader's own feelings about the characters and the values each one represents. This one is definitely worth a read. Even if you walk away hating it, it will have challenged your perception of "normalcy" and how society should deal with people who "aren't like us".