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Title: The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing ISBN: 0-679-72182-7 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 May, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.93 (29 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Moving Story
Comment: This book is a disturbing and sad look at what happens to "the perfect family" when their fifth child is born. His name is Ben and he has serious emotional and developmental problems. He was hyperactive and full of rage while he was in the womb (causing his mother a great deal of physical pain during her pregnancy) and once he was born he continued to vent his rage at the world. The book really made me think about how I would handle a similar situation with my own family. Do you institutionalize or not? Do you go from doctor to doctor and find the right medication, or, do you sit back and do the best you can with what you emotionally have to offer?? I haven't read the sequel yet but I plan to. This book is wonderfully written and very moving. It continued to haunt me for days after I put it down. While there were some flaws with the character development (or LACK of development,) it was overall an excellent read.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Fifth Child
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: This one hits way too close to home
Comment: 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.
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Title: Ben, In the World : The Sequel to the Fifth Child by Doris Lessing ISBN: 0060934654 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 24 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories by Malcom Bradbury, Malcolm Bradbury ISBN: 0140063064 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: July, 1989 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill ISBN: 0385418493 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Prisons We Choose to Live Inside by Doris M. Lessing ISBN: 0060390778 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 14 November, 1987 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Sweetest Dream : A Novel by Doris Lessing ISBN: 0060937556 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 24 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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