Doris Lessing

The Fifth Child

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A classic tale from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, of a family torn apart by the arrival of Ben, their feral fifth child.
‘Listening to the laughter, the sounds of children playing, Harriet and David would reach for each other’s hand, and smile, and breathe happiness.’
Four children, a beautiful old house, the love of relatives and friends — Harriet and David Lovatt’s life is a glorious hymn to domestic bliss and old-fashioned family values. But when their fifth child is born, a sickly and implacable shadow is cast over this tender idyll. Large and ugly, violent and uncontrollable, the infant Ben, ‘full of cold dislike’, tears at Harriet’s breast. Struggling to care for her new-born child, faced with a darkness and a strange defiance she has never known before, Harriet is deeply afraid of what, exactly, she has brought into the world …
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334 printed pages
Publication year
2012
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Impressions

  • Маша Алешинаshared an impression5 years ago

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Quotes

  • Hanne Warberg Harbohas quoted5 years ago
    Who said, ‘Well, you’re old-fashioned, that’s all. And a lot of girls would like to be, if they got the chance.’
  • Haikuhas quoted6 years ago
    The schoolgirl was there all the time, poor Bridget, clinging fast to this miracle of a family. Rather, in fact, as Harriet and David did. Both more than once – seeing the girl’s face, reverential, even awed, always on the watch as if she feared to miss some revelation of goodness or grace the moment she allowed her attention to lapse – saw themselves. Even uneasily saw themselves. It was too much…excessive…Surely they should be saying to her, ‘Look here, Bridget, don’t expect so much. Life isn’t like that!’ But life is like that, if you choose right: so why should they feel she couldn’t have what they had so plentifully?
  • Haikuhas quoted6 years ago
    Happy families,’ said Molly critically: she was standing up for a life where domesticity was kept in its place, a background to what was important

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