Rating: 
Summary: Not an ordinary horror story after all
Review: "The Fifth Child" isn't a typical Doris Lessing novel. There's none of the bleak introspection you might expect if you're familiar with her other more famous works. Here, she tackles the horror story genre for the first time and shows what an incredibly versatile and talented writer she is. The narrative is linear and the storyline straightforward. The prose is clear and uncluttered. The life of Harriet and David Lovatt from the time they meet at an office party to their shattered twilight years as they watch with horror their changeling child grow is told in a single rolling sequence unbroken by chapters, the effect of which is to focus with merciless clarity on the phenomenon of Ben and his pernicious influence of destruction on the Lovatt family and clan. It may be tempting to see Harriet and David as an ordinary couple caught in this weird, near supernatural conundrum but in typical Lessing fashion, she seems almost to suggest to the reader (this reader, at least) that Ben might be their just punishment for so irresponsibly burdening themselves with such a big house and breeding like rabbits when their finances won't allow it, yet using emotional blackmail to live off the love, goodwill and charity of their parents - David's father (James) provides the cash while Harriet's mother (Dorothy) becomes the resident slave. Read in this light, "The Fifth Child" isn't just a domestic horror story but becomes a different entity altogether. A kind of morality play, perhaps. Quite clearly, Lessing had planned on a sequel. The novel closes almost too abruptly, leaving several loose ends untied. Like "The Silence of the Lambs" anticipates "Hannibal", "The Fifth Child" anticipates "Ben". It's a scary, creepy but thoroughly engaging and thought provoking novel. Lessing is in great form throughout and I'd be looking forward to reading the sequel....if the reviews weren't so lukewarm.
Rating: 
Summary: Ms. Lessing wrote herself into a corner . . .
Review: and finding no way out of her dilemma, simply dropped the story and left it where it lay.
When I picked this volume up, I had not read any of Lessing's work. I found her characterizations vivid, her presentation of plot initially clear. She ultimately presents the fifth child as a villian, even prenatally, and builds on that. It seems, however, that once she gets her young antagonist well into grade school, she really doesn't know where to go from there. The story and behavior of the boy become tiresomely predictable and repetitive. In her endeavor to show the disintegration of the family around the mother's determination to raise her aberrant son, she starts out energetically, but seems to tire of her theme, or else to run out of ways to successfully conclude her story (not to be confused with a "happy ending", please understand).
My feeling about this book is rather like a nagging headache, now relieved, but unpleasantly remembered. I am not encouraged to sample her other works.
Rating:
Summary: You'll be thinking about this book for days.
Review: Doris Lessing is an excellent writer and this book is no exception. On the surface, The Fifth Child is an intriguing story about a young boy who is different, seemingly not human. But, it also delves into many issues: how mothers are responsible for their children, the mother-child bond and responses to difference. It is almost impossible to put The Fifth Child down once you pick it up. You may want to read it again and again. It really makes you think.
Rating:
Summary: Abnormality Embodied
Review: Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Lessing has written about the clash of cultures, the gross injustices of racial inequality, the struggle among opposing elements within an individuals own personality, and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. However, her novel The Fifth Child seems to bring to light the twisted social an moral values of today's society. Or does it?Lessing tells us the chilling story of the Lovatts. In the unconstrained atmosphere of England in the late 1960's, Harriet and David Lovatt seem to defy the greedy and selfish spirit of the times with their version of tradition and normalcy. They want a large family, all the expected pleasures of a rich and responsible home life, children growing, Harriet tending, David providing. Even as the time's events take a dark turn, with a sudden surge in crime and unemployment, the Lovatt's cling to their belief that an obstinately guarded contentedness will preserve them from the world outside. Until the birth of their fifth child. Harriet and David are stricken with astonishment at their new infant. Almost "gruesome in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong, demanding and violent," Ben has nothing infant-like about him, nothing innocent or wholesome, nothing normal by society's standards. Harriet and David understand immediately that he will never be accepted in their world. David cannot bring himself to touch him. Harriet finds she cannot love him as she should love her own child. The four other children are afraid of him. Family and friends who once enjoyed visiting with the Lovatt's begin to stay away. Now, in this house, where there had been nothing but kindness, warmth, and comfort, there is restraint, wariness, and anxiety. Harriet and David are torn, as they would never have believed possible, between their instincts as parents and their shocked reaction to this fierce and unlovable baby. Their vision of the world as a carefree and ultimately happy place is desperately threatened by the mere existence of one of their own children. As the novel continues, we are drawn deep into the life of the Lovatt family, and are witness to the terrifying confusion of emotions that becomes their daily life as they cope with Ben and with their own responses to him throughout his childhood and adolescence. Lessing's plot is absolutely brilliant. It was thought out, detailed, and the setting she chose enhances the story. A major problem, however, is that the novel seems to have left something out from Ben and his inner feelings. We never really get to hear his point of view, we cannot understand his reasoning on matters, nor can we relate to him in any way. Lessing should have developed Ben's character more, and brought him closer to the reader. We're left with an empty feeling, a craving for more. The reader wonders if Ben can understand what he is, or what he is doing. Overall, Lessing gave us a wonderful tale, and was only hindered by her use of character development (or lack thereof). What is Doris Lessing trying to give us? A reflection of society's unwillingness to confront its own most horrific aspects? Is it meant to be a challenge for us to change? Readers have questioned the reasons for Lessing writing this novel. According to her, it is nothing more than a horrifying, yet realistic, story. I agree with her, and think that this story is only that: a story. Readers should not expect a moral at the end of this tale. Susan Sontag states, in her essay Against Interpretation, that "From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art." With this novel, we must do the exact opposite, there is no ambiguity involved. Doris Lessing is able to weave complex stories that are amazingly enjoyable to read. As a writer, she is one of the best at capturing the interests of her readers.
Rating: 
Summary: A thought-provoking book
Review: Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child" will be loved by some and hated by others, but it's hard to be ambivalent about a book that evokes such strong emotions in its readers. The premise of the book--how family, friends, and distant relatives deal with the birth of Ben, the fifth child of David and Harriet Lovatt--is soon overshadowed by the reader's own feelings about the characters and the values each one represents. This one is definitely worth a read. Even if you walk away hating it, it will have challenged your perception of "normalcy" and how society should deal with people who "aren't like us".
Rating:
Summary: A thought-provoking book
Review: Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child" will be loved by some and hated by others, but it's hard to be ambivalent about a book that evokes such strong emotions in its readers. The premise of the book--how family, friends, and distant relatives deal with the birth of Ben, the fifth child of David and Harriet Lovatt--is soon overshadowed by the reader's own feelings about the characters and the values each one represents. This one is definitely worth a read. Even if you walk away hating it, it will have challenged your perception of "normalcy" and how society should deal with people who "aren't like us".
Rating:
Summary: The Modern Prometheus, revised
Review: Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child (Knopf, 1988) Harriet and David Lovett (ah, the symbolism) are doomed from the start. Young and married in the early sixties, living mostly off David's father and rich young stepmother, they have been beguiled by that most insidious and destructive Christian aphorism, "be fruitful and multiply." They want kids, oodles of kids, a plethora of kids, a monstrous family. And they get it, in more ways than one, with the birth of Ben, the fifth child of the title. If you know Lessing, you probably already have an idea of whether you'll like this or not. Lessing's style is dry, English-minimalist-ironic-witty, the kind of uppercrust diction often misrepresented in the American media as a kind of disaffected snobbery. This book, perhaps of all the Lessings that have crossed my path over the years, puts paid once and for all to the snobbery aspect, as Lessing turns her didactic tone and minimalist attitude to the exploration of the horror of raising an outcast. Not to say this is a horror novel, any more than Geoffrey Household's The Sending, Stephen Gregory's The Woodwitch, or Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun are horror novels; none fits the genre per se, but all leave the reader with a decidedly sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Call it the experience of quotidian horror, rather than the Lovecraftian howling-mad beasts or Steve King's terrors in the closet. (One could probably make the case that Lessing, Household, Gregory, and Trumbo were the founding fathers of what's being termed "the new horror" these days, which I've called in other reviews "the horror of absence," so ably written by Kathe Koja and Lucius Shepard, among others. The criticisms most often levelled at this novel are exactly the same as those aimed at the newer writers, and for the same reasons-- "not enough is going on.") It is also obvious from the start that this is a flight of fantasy, a piece of utter fiction in the truest sense, and that the characters are symbolic of something. Lessing never really lets you in on what they're symbols of until the final paragraphs, and while it's not a spoiler in the traditional sense, it would be a criminal act for me to reveal the way Lessing wraps things up at the end; suffice to say the closing paragraphs of this novel are some of the strongest I've encountered in a very long time. Only three and a half months into 2001, this is already an extremely strong year for my reading list, but I still think The Fifth Child has a good chance of making this year's Top 15. ****
Rating:
Summary: just a little...different.
Review: Great book, reminded me of Frankenstein in ways, Jane Austen in others. Read this one, then read A Clockwork Orange - it could be a continuation of this story.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, Disturbing, Despressing
Review: Great but sad book about a family overwhelmed by the needs of unique child. A child whose destructive impact was felt even before he was born. A book about the duty of a mother for her child in the face tremendous sacrifice all the while those around her urge her to take the "easy" way out. A book that explores the frail ties that keep a family together and happy. Concise, brutal, and a book I couldn't put down even though each new page exposed me to greater horror.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, Disturbing, Despressing
Review: Great but sad book about a family overwhelmed by the needs of unique child. A child whose destructive impact was felt even before he was born. A book about the duty of a mother for her child in the face tremendous sacrifice all the while those around her urge her to take the "easy" way out. A book that explores the frail ties that keep a family together and happy. Concise, brutal, and a book I couldn't put down even though each new page exposed me to greater horror.
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