Customer Reviews

The Fifth Child

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

I saw Lessing in an interview with Bill Moyer where she talked briefly about this book. When she was asked if she meant this or that by writing it, she simply said "No, you see, people always read messages and things, which I don't intend." "It's a story. I'm a storyteller." So I picked up the book... I loved it. I still do. I've read it for the third time this past weekend while traveling and enjoyed it. It is easy reading, yet it touches on so many subjects if you want to read too much into it. You can consider it from the "mother love" aspect or the way we dispose of things because they don't fit within our acceptable "norms" or the "troubled youth" or many other social issues... To me, the act of sending Ben to die is not any worse than the horrible acts Ben commits for being what he is.

I do not sympathize with David or Harriet. Not because they wanted too many children, but because they wanted to achieve their dreams on the expense of others. Harriet always needed her mother and David his dad. This was well known before they set out on their endeavor. So they consciously and selfishly continued their plan, until they were dealt a bad hand. They simply couldn't deal with it, they weren't prepared and it wasn't something that their parents can solve for them so their empire crumbled.

This book is different, unique and if you insist on having quality in what you read, this book delivers this as well. Hey you can even consider the genetic possibility of conceiving a Ben if you are into science fiction as well :)

I keep expecting Lessing to deliver a high quality of fiction. The quality is there, for sure, but I have to wonder about how much is fiction.

The elements are all too familiar in real life. An eager young couple sets about raising a family, and succeeds far too well. They can not support their own ambitions, whether measured in dollar amounts or in units of work caring for the children. The fifth child embodies a tragic accident of birth, and the fragile sitation implodes.

I don't mean to trivialize Lessing's story - even when I saw what was coming, I was hypnotically compelled to see it through, like the proverbial bird in front of a snake. (I've also avoided spoilers as much as I can, so vagueness is intended.) Taken in literal terms, the story carries a gut-wrenching sensation that's much too close to life.

One step above literality, I parented a "fifth child", or tried to. It wasn't my own spawn; it had been cast out by it's natural parent, the one that hadn't bailed out long since. My concerns for the child were twice the usual: I had a duty to prepare the child for the world, but had a second duty of protecting the world from that child. (That unpleasant period didn't last, and I was truly relieved at its end.) I did not need to grant Lessing very much poetic license to see the fact in her fiction.

If I let the immediacy of memory die down, I can read the story at more metaphorical levels, too. I suppose that many parents have high hopes, before the reality of a pimply teenager sprawls on their couch. Outside of parenting, I know that I have undertaken tasks way beyond my capacity, with some silly faith that things would work out somehow. The more I rely on faith, the worse the outcome.

I understand that Lessing has written a sequel. To tell the truth, I don't think I have the stomach for it - and I mean that as a compliment. She is far too successful in invoking the dark spirits that resemble my personal demons, and no other author has ever come close.

Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Lessing has written about the clash of cultures, the gross injustices of racial inequality, the struggle among opposing elements within an individuals own personality, and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. However, her novel The Fifth Child seems to bring to light the twisted social an moral values of today's society. Or does it?

Lessing tells us the chilling story of the Lovatts. In the unconstrained atmosphere of England in the late 1960's, Harriet and David Lovatt seem to defy the greedy and selfish spirit of the times with their version of tradition and normalcy. They want a large family, all the expected pleasures of a rich and responsible home life, children growing, Harriet tending, David providing. Even as the time's events take a dark turn, with a sudden surge in crime and unemployment, the Lovatt's cling to their belief that an obstinately guarded contentedness will preserve them from the world outside. Until the birth of their fifth child.

Harriet and David are stricken with astonishment at their new infant. Almost "gruesome in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong, demanding and violent," Ben has nothing infant-like about him, nothing innocent or wholesome, nothing normal by society's standards. Harriet and David understand immediately that he will never be accepted in their world. David cannot bring himself to touch him. Harriet finds she cannot love him as she should love her own child. The four other children are afraid of him. Family and friends who once enjoyed visiting with the Lovatt's begin to stay away.

Now, in this house, where there had been nothing but kindness, warmth, and comfort, there is restraint, wariness, and anxiety. Harriet and David are torn, as they would never have believed possible, between their instincts as parents and their shocked reaction to this fierce and unlovable baby. Their vision of the world as a carefree and ultimately happy place is desperately threatened by the mere existence of one of their own children. As the novel continues, we are drawn deep into the life of the Lovatt family, and are witness to the terrifying confusion of emotions that becomes their daily life as they cope with Ben and with their own responses to him throughout his childhood and adolescence.

Lessing's plot is absolutely brilliant. It was thought out, detailed, and the setting she chose enhances the story. A major problem, however, is that the novel seems to have left something out from Ben and his inner feelings. We never really get to hear his point of view, we cannot understand his reasoning on matters, nor can we relate to him in any way. Lessing should have developed Ben's character more, and brought him closer to the reader. We're left with an empty feeling, a craving for more. The reader wonders if Ben can understand what he is, or what he is doing. Overall, Lessing gave us a wonderful tale, and was only hindered by her use of character development (or lack thereof).

What is Doris Lessing trying to give us? A reflection of society's unwillingness to confront its own most horrific aspects? Is it meant to be a challenge for us to change? Readers have questioned the reasons for Lessing writing this novel. According to her, it is nothing more than a horrifying, yet realistic, story. I agree with her, and think that this story is only that: a story. Readers should not expect a moral at the end of this tale. Susan Sontag states, in her essay Against Interpretation, that "From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art." With this novel, we must do the exact opposite, there is no ambiguity involved. Doris Lessing is able to weave complex stories that are amazingly enjoyable to read. As a writer, she is one of the best at capturing the interests of her readers.

Lessing's thesis hits us where we live: What happens when our everyday, comfortable domestic existence is disrupted by the abnormal, the supernatural. In the book, the happy, festive home of Harriet and David is torn asunder by the arrival of their fifth child, Ben. Hyperactive only captures part of Ben's behavior: he is uncontrollable, a wild child of nature and instinct who Harriet can manage only by the use of medications.

The issues raised by Ben's powers are thought-provoking and get to the core of who we are and how we live.

However, I think the book loses much of its force because of the way Lessing writes. Her style is straight-forward, almost didactic; she is telling us what is happening rather than letting her characters reveal their feelings by their actions. All the major characters are little more than two dimensional stick-figures who are weak and quickly overwhelmed by Ben's primal nature.

In the end, a powerful, albeit flawed allegory. It would make a great horror movie.

This book, The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing, is a journey into human acceptance. I enjoyed the realistic nature of the book, even though it brings up points about goblins and trolls. Even though I feel that it is hard to believe that a mother could reject her young, Doris Lessing has the authenticity of life to make it seem possible. The way she always leaves the reader unsure and always guessing is phenomenal. But the best part of the book is the descriptions of Ben's actions: "She locked him in: if he could kill a dog than why not a child?"
I feel that the main theme of this book is that if people don't understand other people, then they will fear or hate the outcasts. Ben tried to fit in but couldn't. Everyone looked at him strange and since he wasn't normal, they cast him out. When he was cast away it only fueled his anger making him more dangerous. I would have to agree with that statement. If someone doesn't look or think the way someone else does, we cast him or her out. Even if we're pretty much the same we will treat like our enemies. I don't like it, but it is true.
I think the book is a good one and I would recommend it to others. Even if you don't like all of the philosophical ideas of it, you can still enjoy the raw fear and suspense in it. A few times the book got so creepy I have to take a break. The part when they sent Ben to the institution was the grossest. I think this book will appeal to the thinkers and the philosophers among us, as well as the gut-wrenching horror fans. This book is truly a good mix of intellect and fear.

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".

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.

The best horror fiction deals with the things that really scare us. Zombies, vampires, werewolves, and the like have their place. But what of the fear that comes from deep inside: questions like, what if your own child was a monster? Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing explores this kind of horror in her novel The Fifth Child, which I first learned of in The Book of Lists: Horror in a "horror novels that don't call themselves horror novels" sort of list.

David and Harriet Lovatt seem to have been made for each other. Their meeting was the proverbial "across a crowded room," and even their ideas on children match exactly: they want many. Even though their first four children (Luke, Helen, Jane, and Paul) arrive somewhat more quickly than anticipated, everything develops easily despite protestations from relatives that their family is growing too fast.

Everything changes, however, with the arrival of the fifth child. The pregnancy is more difficult, the birth more an ordeal, and the new baby, called Ben, is very different from their other children -- in ways they all find deeply unsettling and often shocking.

In addition to offering a highly gripping and suspenseful read, with The Fifth Child author Doris Lessing investigates the nature of family and the societal definition of what it means to be "human." Ben is referred to as an alien, a monster, a freak, an atavism from a race that is perhaps better suited to living underground, and various other "inhuman" monikers.

Lessing presents Ben's myriad quirks and misbehaviors with a tone that replicates that of a horror novel. This is quite appropriate given that the other family members view him with extreme trepidation that develops into fear for their lives with a family pet turns up dead.

This all results in those outside the immediate family becoming increasingly distant. Lessing skillfully illustrates this isolation through Christmas attendance, with successively fewer visitors each passing year. Eventually, Luke and Helen (away at boarding school) choose to spend the holiday with their grandparents, effectively keeping them away from home all year long.

Ben appears to be unknowable, and this is exactly the kind of thing that inspires terror in most people. At first, the family try to deal with Ben in the only way they know how. This may seem cruel at first, but the relief is palpable when their decision is reached. But Harriet then makes a pivotal decision that essentially destroys her family.

The Fifth Child does end on a note of hope, however slight. (The Nobel committee recognized this when they awarded her in 2007, writing, "From collapse and chaos emerge the elementary qualities that allow Lessing to retain hope in humanity.")

The novel was well enough received by readers to inspire a sequel, Ben in the World. But The Fifth Child on its own is a marvel: a thought-provoking, unforgettable story that makes the reader ask what he or she would do in the circumstances -- and then deal with the answer that comes.

A conservative, tradition-bound family; a large house always filled with children and guests and friends and animals; a pleasure-filled, if harried, oasis in the middle of England--this is the setting into which Doris Lessing introduces her monster. Even before Harriet's and David's fifth child, Ben, is born, he shatters the serenity of his mother's life: "this savage thing inside her" causes her extraordinary agony with "its ceaseless battering and striving" in her womb. She drowns herself with tranquilizers, hoping to subdue the restlessness within, but she is ultimately "alone in her ordeal."

During her pregnancy, Harriet conjures images of "pathetic botched creatures," the result of experiments by scientists, and Ben's arrival in the world fulfills this prophecy: he looks like "a troll or a goblin or something." He is an evolutionary "throwback" (or a mutation?), the stuff of horror stories, the result of a genetic mistake and, perhaps, all those sleeping pills. And he is, without a doubt, evil.

Containing a hint of science fiction, Lessing's tale is basically a subdued tale of terror. As an infant, Ben at first makes visitors "puzzled, even anxious; but then came fear, though everyone tried to conceal it." Animals die; children are hurt. Soon, Ben is shut up in his room, an outsider and a prisoner in his own home. Then, friends and relatives stop coming, and the family, too, is isolated. And, eventually, Ben finds his place in the Clockwork Orange underworld of delinquent youth, for whom he serves as both a mascot and a mentor.

Although "The Fifth Child" is the shortest of novels, there are really two stories here: one examining the horrific side of maternity, how a child can test a mother's love beyond its natural limits; the other reminiscent of H. G. Wells's allegorical struggle between the Elois and the Morlocks. Ironically, this second, potent theme isn't one Lessing necessarily intended. In an interview, she claimed that her "what if" story merely posed the question: ''What if you had a child like this, what would you do? My publisher said to me, in a very authoritarian way, 'Of course, this is your vision of England.' I said, 'It hadn't occurred to me.' It hadn't.''

Yet, undeniably, both themes are at work here: what makes one woman's personal calamity doubly powerful is the depiction of the struggle between our inherent primitive nature and our extrinsic civilized artifice. It's hardly hyperbolic to say that this is a minor classic, one that will join the dystopian nightmares of Shelley and Wells and Orwell and Burgess as a model of its kind.