About this title: Harriet and David Levatt defy the chaotic, unconstrained 1960s with a closely-guarded, nurturing family environment. Into an already large family, which Harriet tends while David works, their fifth child is born. Ben, an ugly, violent, demanding baby, is shockingly alien to their comfortable, kind home--his mother cannot love him and his father cannot even touch him. The four other children are afraid of him. Their external family and friends stay away. This novel explores a family's--and by extension, society's--attempts to deal with the brutality that exists within it, despite efforts to ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1989-05-14
ISBN-13:9780679721826ISBN:0679721827
Description: Very Good. Cover has very little shelf wear. Pages are clean and bright. There are four words on two separate pages that have been underlined with ink otherwise paperback looks great. ISBN 0679721827 133 pages. WE SHIP DAILY. Thank you for your patronage! Selling books online since 2001. read more
Edition: Book Club (BCE/BOMC)
Binding: Cloth
Publisher: Alfred A Knopf
Date Published: 1988
Description: Very Good + to Near Fine in Fair + to Good- jacket. Hard Cover. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" BCE. DJ has moderate wear, couple tears. (Store Display-GF) read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, Westminister, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780394571058ISBN:0394571053
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. -----Serving the NW Chicago suburbs since 1975----- read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988, c
Date Published: 1988-01-01
Description: HARDCOVER: Book is good, DJ has. HARDCOVER: book in good shape, dj has wear which may include tears. Daily shipping, large selection! ! ! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780394571058ISBN:0394571053
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780679721826ISBN:0679721827
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. A former library book with the usual identifiers. -, Trade PaperBack, Very Good / read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780394571058ISBN:0394571053
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Description: Very good. Dust Cover Missing. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780679721826ISBN:0679721827
Description: Acceptable. Book may have underlining, highlighting, or notes throughout. Well used. Still readable but not for the collector. All orders processed within 2 business days. Ships from Foxboro MA. read more
"It was incredibly scary! - I very much enjoyed her way of writing. She has a certain way of bringing her characters to life that grabs the you, and marches reader and the lessing-universe together. She has an unbelievably wonderful way of giving life to her setups and surroundings in the book - not to mention her way of describing the looks, habits, and the mental state of the fifth child through events and the eyes of the loving mother. Her writing grants you a whole new way of reading. Making the reader part of the story, as they can read and foresee the mother's mind.
"Maybe not the best book to read while pregnant. I read this in a sitting: A happily married if naive couple have four lovely children and a house entirely subsidized by relatives. Which does in fact create a great deal of happiness--or a 'good time', anyway--until a fifth but horrible child is born. I come away wishing that A.S. Byatt had written this story instead. She's attracted to similar psychological themes & super-natural tropes by which to explore them, but does so (IMO) with a more deft, deep and nuanced stroke.
Lessing's choice to make the super-natural qualities of the fifth child ultimately inaccessible to the mother and the reader does leave her a powerful psychological story of family and happiness in the negative space, but strangely denies its own unique potential to plumb its themes more deeply."
"Not quite a horror story, but filled with threat. Like The Exorcist, it deals with how people can look at something categorically impossible straight in the face and describe it as being fairly mundane. This fifth child, Ben, is described as some sort of monster or at least an unclassifiable quasi-human, and the mother seeks confirmation of this since everyone seems afraid to say it. When a doctor asks what course of action such an admission would incite, the mother realizes that in seeking sub-human classification for her son, she is looking for someone to condone his murder. It isn't said like this, but I believe this is the core theme of the book. It's a special topic in a time when we do have the option to terminate a fetus should we be uncomfortable with its probablity for developing Downs Syndrome. I'm not criticizing that particular choice--each mother's situation is different--but Lessing directs us to ask why we search for causes of everything in our personalities. I've always believed seeking to define homosexuality as a genetic trait is rooted in the desire to eliminate it in the broader culture. For that reason, and its quality, I liked this book very much."
"Novella of a couple who want to raise 8 children in a big, rambling Victorian house. They stop after five children though because the fifth child is a monster, variously described as an animalistic throwback to cave men or an inhuman beast. He winds up being raised by a street gang. Transparently didactic fable about the disintegration of society and the dangers of overpopulation. Takes a snarky tone toward the parents who, old-fashionedly, want a lot of children. Lessing is a finely skilled writer with an agenda."
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