The Fifth Child

by Doris Lessing (Author), Doris Lessing (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1988

  $4.31

  This novel tells the story of two people who want the same things - fidelity, love, family life and a stable home. They are out of line with the fashions of the 60s, but life seems to smile on them until Harriet's fifth pregnancy, when everything starts to go wrong...Doris Lessing is author of The Grass is Singing , The Golden Notebook , Briefing for a Descent into Hell , The Good Terrorist and The Sirian Experiment .

• Used

  Paperback
  1989

  $3.35

• New

  paperback
  

  $11.04

  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 ...