Dave's Book Blog: "The Fifth Child" by Doris Lessing

Sunday, 14 November 2021

"The Fifth Child" by Doris Lessing

A brilliant short novel by an author at the very top of her Nobel-Prize-winning game.

David and Harriet get married, buy a big house, and settle down to have a large family. They have four wonderful children but the fifth is different. Described variously as a goblin, a little troll, a changeling and a Neanderthal, Ben is angry, vicious and educationally backwards. He is suspected of murdering pets; the other children are afraid of him. The unchaptered novel, written in the third person but principally from mother Harriet's point of view and in the past tense, chronicles the devastating effects on the family of such a difficult baby.

My emotions were manipulated into a roller-coaster ride. I was horrified, terrified and made so sad by the plight of this poor family. I empathised with all of them (except Ben) and I understood and accepted all the diverse arguments and points of view.

It is superb. After the first quarter, I found it impossible to put down.

One of the moist wonderful things about this book is Lessing's use of descriptions which perfectly reflect or foreshadow the action: sympathetic fallacy at its best:

"They could hardly see each other. Apart from the car lights, and the lights from the building, it was dark. Water squelched under foot." (p 102)
"No reply. Nothing. A blotch of shadow momentarily dimmed the thin dirty light under the skylight: a bird had passed, on its way from one tree to another." (p 140)

This paragraph contains plot spoilers. The pacing of the novel is perfect. The adult characters are introduced in the first quarter which ends in Harriet's fifth pregnancy. The second quarter describes the nightmare pregnancy and Ben's first year in which he starts attacking animals; it culminates in his first words. In the third quarter Ben is sent away to an institution from where he is 'rescued' by a guilty Harriet; this section ends with Ben being sent to school. In the final quarter the family disintegrates as Ben sinks into delinquency. The book ends with Ben on the cusp of leaving school and Harriet, who realises that her decision to rescue Ben has destroyed her family, wondering what will happen to him now. The story will be continued in the sequel: Ben, in the World.

Selected quotes:

"There was a forced hecticity to the scene." (p 8)
"You want things both ways. The aristocracy - yes, they can have children like rabbits, and expect to, but they have the money for it. And poor people can have children, and half of them die, and expect to. But people like us, in the middle, we have to be careful about the children we have so we can look after them." (p 23)
"There was an ugly edge on events: more and more it seemed that two peoples lived in England, not one - enemies, hating each other, who could not hear what the other said." (p 30) The Fifth Child was written in 1988 and this comment in set in 1972.
"She spoke in a way new to her, as if listening to what she said and afraid of what she might say. ... So do people speak whose thoughts are running along secretly in channels they would rather other people did not know about." (p 65)
"Four months old ... He was like an angry, hostile little troll." (p 69)

Also read the sequel: Ben, in the World

Lessing also wrote The Golden Notebook

November 2021; 159 pages