[BOOK REVIEW] The Fifth Child (1988) by Doris Lessing 📚

Doris Lessing (1919-2013) was a British writer who was born in Iran and grew up in Southern Rhodesia. She's considered to be one of the literary giants of the 20th century. In 2007 she received the Nobel Prize in Literature, as the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to receive the award. The Fifth Child from 1988 is about a married couple in London whose life changes drastically when they have their fifth child, a repulsive monstrosity. 

The Fifth Child is a fierce and ethical page turner about the first deadly sin: pride. Or is it? Lessing's thin novel is loaded with so much weight that all interpretations are equally plausible.

The unfashionable 1960s couple Harriet and David, unaffected by the sexual revolution, marries and moves into a giant house that they can't really afford. From the start, they are therefore economically dependent on David's father, but also socially, they bind their respective families together when they begin to produce child after child in a way that the outside world regards as highly irresponsible. They want it all. A happy family. They long for children's laughter and grand family dinners. Nothing can be allowed to stand in their way, and everything can be sacrificed for the sake of the happiness of the family.

The introduction that describes David and Harriet Lovatt's perfect life and how they in just six years have four children could be taken from a glossy lifestyle magazine. But the feeling that disaster lurks around the corner is palpable.

"Happiness. A happy family. The Lovatts were a happy family. It was what they had chosen and what they deserved.... It had been hard preserving their belief in themselves when the spirit of the times, the greedy and selfish sixties, had been so ready to condemn them, to isolate, to diminish their best selves."

And it literally does, in the shape of the fifth child, Ben. The child is an inexplicable monstrosity: a prehistoric dwarf, satans spawn, a grotesque changeling? Lessing's semi-fantastical depiction of how his presence makes the family rot from the inside is masterfully conceived. She paints complex and hard to define character portraits with her straightforward language. Harriet and David are simultaneously selfish and altruistic, foolish and rational. They are people of flesh and blood, and despite all the criticism of the nuclear family, it's difficult as a reader not to make the dream of the young couple into your own for a while, even if the prose constantly vibrates with markers of doom. Harriet's pregnancies are difficult. They get worse every time. The huge Christmas celebrations get smaller by the year and the visits from relatives are less and less frequent. David is more and more worn out in his efforts to support his expanding family. And although they are cautious Harriet becomes pregnant for a fifth time.

     

But what or who is the fifth child? A symbolic portrayal of a philosophical problem (is it morally right to sacrifice one for the happiness of the many?) Or is it an apocalyptic vision of the modern family project? Or an allegory of the English middle class and its journey down to the bottom? Or is it even about the decay of the whole Empire? Or is it simply a horrific fantasy of a humanity who in its hunt for more and more and more gets intoxicated by the belief that life can be fully planned and controlled?

 @SteemSwede