Volume 35, Number 11 · June 30, 1988
Alien
By D.A.N. Jones
The Fifth Child
by Doris Lessing
Knopf, 133 pp., $16.95
Doris Lessing's terse and chilling novella is not recommended for the maternity ward. It may stir up deep-rooted fears in men as well as women, in sons as well as mothers. It is a tale of a mother who cannot love her son. Harriet fears Ben, even when he is still kicking in the womb, even when he is feeding greedily at her breast. She comes to think of him as 'weird' or 'evil' (though she does not use these words) and so do other people, she believes, though they will not admit it. The idea is familiar in folklore and mythology—the changelings of the British Isles, the abiku of West Africa. Pasiphaë kept her monster son, the Minotaur, in a prison, to act as a sort of executioner. Jocasta exposed her accursed son, Oedipus, to die on a mountainside. 'Euthanasia' nearly puts an end to Ben, Harriet's baby, too.
Review, 2560 words
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