The Fifth Child (1988)

I'm really not sure what I think of this book. A short, disturbing novel about a family that's torn apart by the birth of their fifth, inhuman child. While pretty definitely not human in the book, Ben is also clearly based on a child with severe autism, which meant that I spent the whole time wondering a)if this really was speculative fiction, and b)just how disturbed I ought to be by everyone's insistence that he's an inhuman monster. ( )

Before his birth, Harriett decides that her fifth child is a monster. As he kicks and struggles in her womb - far too unlike the butterflies of her previous four children - she imagines herself in a struggle with the developing fetus, and wages war with sedatives and physical exertion. This child is the unwanted child - the child who is conceived far too soon, the child who cannot be welcomed even before his birth, the child who is so different from his four fair older siblings.

Although occasionally "Poor Ben," the fifth child is more often referred to as "the brute," a monster, a dwarf, and his family - Harriett most often - ponders from where this deformed and depraved being could have come - what goblin city or alien world could spawn such a creature. He is the home-wrecker, the psychopath who seeks to harm his older, cherished siblings even in infancy, the freak of physical development whose strength marks him as something to be feared as opposed to a child to be loved.

The Fifth Child is a horror story, but the true monsters aren't those identified by the protagonists. Lessing's novel is a chilling tale of selfishness and cruelty which can leave the reader fearing of the monsters she shares, and those still to come. ( )

I found this book to be quite unsettling. The story begins with a young couple, Harriet and David, who, although not the sociable type, met at an office party and eventually ended up falling in love and marrying. Their hope was to have a very large family. This was frowned upon by various friends and relatives. However, they made it all the way up to five children until...

Well, the fifth child was not what they bargained for. This was a child who described in such a way as to seem to be a monster, but the most horrible thing of all for me was that he seemed too human. I kept changing this fantasy story in my mind into a memoir and felt this child named Ben suffered from autism. He, at times, seemed to cross the boundary back and forth between human and monster. So what was he?

The book had very little, if any, ending. Just know that there is a sequel. It's probably one that I will read with the hope that all will go well for Ben in the future. ( )

What a book! What a story! What a writer!

David and Harriett are unique individuals and different from their work group and their peers.

In their minds, finding each other equated to a perfect match.

Living a life of upper middle class in the countryside of England, they purchase a huge house, unaffordable even by their standards.

I couldn't relate to David and Harriett and the author did a great job at portraying them as selfish and self absorbed individuals who, together as a team, double the narcissistic behavior.

Expecting family to support their choices, immediately they decide to have many children. Much to the consternation of parents, relatives and friends, in rapid succession, they have four healthy children.

Finding herself pregnant with the fifth proves problematic. The child appears to battle in the womb, wearing Harriett to a frazzle.

Pounding, punching and kicking until she is bruised, the 11 pound baby is born. Child number five is antisocial, kills animals, tries to kill his brother and is consequently institutionalized.

Rescuing Ben from the institution and returning him to home is fraught with drama as Ben becomes increasingly "evil."

Lessing does an excellent job portraying a society that blames the sociopathy of the child on mother for her lack of ability to love the child, while paradoxically portraying a very unlikeable mother and father.

This is a disturbing and worthwhile read. ( )

This was a book group choice. The title was sufficiently intriguing and the author well-known – Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 – so I was looking forward to reading this novella.

The Fifth Child

Harriett and David are two old-fashioned young people who meet at an office party. They quickly decide to marry and look forward to raising a large family with at least six children. They buy a huge property and settle into a life of domestic bliss, producing a new child every year and having extended family stay for weeks at a time. When Harriett falls pregnant for a fifth time, everything changes. The pregnancy is different, difficult, and the resulting child ugly, deficient of normal feeling. This is Ben. What will happen now?

My experience

The premise was an interesting one and made me think of Lionel Shriver’s novel ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’. I wondered whether this was a similar exploration of how a child develops without a mother’s love, but the tale feels much more complex and it is difficult to reduce the story to such a simple logic (although critics have tried – see below). The description of the pregnancy makes it clear that this is a very different experience for Harriett, to the extent that, considered rationally, her experiences verge on the ludicrous. It is to Lessing’s credit that I never failed to believe in her characters or their experiences.

As the story develops, Ben’s difference becomes more pronounced, although there is still a question mark over its extent – teachers and doctors refuse to recognise that he is an exceptionally unusual child. I found the storyline so interesting because there is no clear response to the situation. Indeed, Lessing herself stated in an interview with the New York Times that there was “no solution” to the problems posed in the book and that readers often struggled to accept this. It is often said that literature is cathartic, allowing readers to experience a problem and its resolution. I found it quite refreshing and challenging that ‘The Fifth Child’ resists this concept. As readers, we cannot be sure of who or indeed what Ben is, how he should be treated or what should be done. I am still thinking about the issues posed by the story several weeks after reading it.

This is a short story – only 159 pages – and I found it easy to read, finishing it in a few days. It could easily be read in a matter of hours. There are no chapters so there is nothing to slow down the pace of the story. Lessing writes in a brisk way, allowing the story to unfold swiftly. I liked the style of the writing, although it does prevent readers from developing much sympathy with the adult characters. I found them to be rather un-likeable from the beginning, perhaps because their dream depends upon the financial and physical support of other characters that they have previously looked down upon.

Having the characters distanced from the reader in this way allows the story to be the central focus. In fact, the whole story feels rather like a myth. I have also read ‘The Cleft’ by Lessing and felt that the style was similar. Lessing seems to tell universal stories rather than specific, localised stories. This is supported by the science-fiction elements of her writing. For instance, there is a strong suggestion in this book that Ben is a ‘throwback’, some kind of caveman accidentally born in the wrong century. Lessing herself sees the book as a horror story and actually re-wrote it to make the reactions of other characters to Ben more unpleasant – and thereby more realistic. Certainly the discomfort Ben engenders in most of the other characters is pronounced and would perhaps be unaccountable if he were seen as simply an unusual child.

Interpreting the story

I liked this story partly because it seems to defy straightforward interpretation. Critics have stated various interpretations of the story to be true and final. Most of these have problems. For instance, viewing Ben as a symbol of the changing reactions to children with developmental disorders seems to be undercut by the sympathetic portrayal of a Down’s Syndrome child. Seeing him as a maternal reject or as a victim of the family ignores what he does and, perhaps most importantly, the implications of the sequel. Lessing has written a follow-up to this story called ‘Ben in the World’ which would seem to lend weight to some interpretations over others. Regardless, I think the refusal to provide simple solutions to the problems posed by Ben is a real strength of the story.

Conclusions

This is a simple but thought-provoking story which uses aspects of a range of genres to create a disturbing tale which shows “how easily things can vanish” (Lessing – NYT interview). It reads like a fable or myth but one without a simple or correct solution. I found it interesting to read as there is ambiguity surrounding Ben and his treatment. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a story which makes them think. I would not recommend it to people who like fully resolved endings and a story with a strong plot. I am not a fan of science fiction but the elements of it in this are not obtrusive so it did not detract from my enjoyment. I would be interested in reading the sequel, ‘Ben in the World’.

This particular edition of the book is nicely presented with clear font and claims to be printed on paper from FSC forests, meaning it is a bit more sustainable than paper from other sources. The £7.99 RRP seems reasonable despite the slimness of the book as I think it would repay re-reading. It will, of course, be available cheaper online. ( )