The Fifth Child
Doris Lessing
Vintage International, 1988
U.S. trade paper, reprint
ISBN 0-679-72182-7
144 pages; $12.95

I resolved to read a Doris Lessing work when she won the Nobel Prize a few weeks ago, and chose The Fifth Child because of its vaguely science fictional reputation. And it does, in fact, partake of the fantastic in some senses, belonging to the “demon seed” subgenre – a story about a child strangely different from other children. Lessing is not one of those mainstream authors who suddenly “discovers” a theme that SF and fantasy writers have been using and developing for generations. Rather, she explores her theme from a conventional, middle-class viewpoint. The book leaves one feeling oddly off-balance because it does not seem as if there is a possible solution to the problem faced by the family here. There is no tidy resolution. It is much more like life than like fiction.

Harriet and David are something of a throw-back as a couple at the beginning of the sexual revolution. They meet in the early 1960s, but despite the new freedoms of the time, they marry almost immediately. Despite the trend toward smaller families, they know they want “at least” six children. Despite their limited means, they purchase a large home, affordable only with both of their salaries. And despite needing both their salaries, Harriet becomes pregnant even before they’ve moved in. They are blissful. The second child comes along in rapid order, only 11 months after the first, and two more follow in quick succession. Four children in six years! Harriet is virtually an earth mother.

Yet all is relatively well, even if Harriet is very tired and needs increasingly more of her mother’s help and financial problems linger gently in the background. Harriet and David’s home becomes the center for all of the extended family, with long holidays for Christmas, Easter and the summer holidays, when scads of relatives arrive from all over England and stay for days on end. Even so, Harriet and David decide to wait at least three years to have another child after their fourth.

But fate intervenes, and Harriet is pregnant again far too soon, to her and David’s dismay. Worse, this pregnancy is exceedingly difficult. The baby is not just active in her womb; it is hyperactive. It beats and kicks at her as if trying to punch its way out, until she must tranquilize herself – and it – almost into insensibility just to get through a day. It is born early, and in a hospital, the only one of the children not born at home. And it is, well, odd. He looks strange, “like a troll, or a goblin or something,” Harriet says, with eyes an odd greenish-yellow.

He is as incorrigible out of the womb as in, a threat to the pets, to property, to himself, to his brothers and sisters. He seems to have no understanding of right or wrong, but to have only very strong survival instincts. Is he a throwback to a subhuman species? He is clearly not emotionally, mentally or physically retarded, even though he cannot learn to read. He is tremendously strong. He is, simply dangerous. And just like that, the lovely family life that Harriet and David have built – the very family -- seems to vanish. The other children hate him, and do everything they can to avoid him. David works longer and longer hours. Harriet doesn’t love him, but can’t bring herself to abandon him. What to do about Ben? Where does he fit in the world? What is to be done with him?

It hurts to read this book. This family feels too real not to feel its anguish when Ben wreaks havoc upon their hitherto idyllic life. Ben feels too real not to pity him and to wonder just what he is and why he is as he is. This book is a little masterpiece of understated terror. All by itself, it makes you begin to understand why Lessing won that prize.

Lessing wrote a follow-up to The Fifth Child called Ben, In the World. I’m eager to read it – and I’ll let you know how it goes.