The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

This novel, the story of a middle class British family who are rocked to their smug little core by the arrival of a monstrous fifth child, just didn't work for me. The premise is promising--what is the child? An alien? A throwback? A genetic aberrance? But the whole narrative arc is just too heavy-handed and overbearing. I gather it's meant to be an indictment of middle-class mores and the failure of society to deal with its own darkness, or something, but Lessing just doesn't pull it off.

I wonder if an author with less esteem and longevity would even have gotten this book published, let alone critically acclaimed. Then again, maybe I'm just dumb. Always a possibility I consider when I'm so at odds with the critical establishment.

This is a classic example of the near-miss. This story had so much possibility that was never borne out. Not to mention a lack of ANY believable characterization at all. It's left me very unsatisfied. There's a sequel too, but the reviews are horrible so I'll probably skip it unless it throws itself at me in the used bookstore.

Comments

[Carly]

I really did enjoy this book and I felt it truly depicted the problems in our society. We really do fail to deal with the; first we repress them (symbolised by locking the child away) and then we come to terms with them and they become part of daily life, something we dont even try and reform and conseqently they expand (the child finds others like himself at school). The prevalence of crime in the media in the house (they always watch crime on TV) both encourages their views and gives them something to aim for. The section that intrigued me most was the asylum where ben got locked up; was lessing trying to say that, although painful, the right way to deal with crime etc is to lock it away and repress it, even though one person will always feel this is wrong? is she trying to show us, via the variety of deformities in the hospital, that crime takes many forms, and we should be constantly vigilant? And in the barbaric way the staff treat ben, is she trying to tell us that we as a society are as awful as the perpetrators of crime, as we have full consciousness of what we are doing? Or is Lessing just being vituperative towards the upper middle class in a post modernistic way (eventually, everyone gives up and acknowledges the world is bleak). I think the book conveys all these messages, and even though it made me depressed after reading it, I felt it was a rewarding experience. I'd love to hear anyone elses opinions- have I just got this totally wrong?

[Fiona]

Please write me about the summery and the characters from the person. Please very fast, because I need it for school...