In this sequel to the chilling The Fifth Child, the monstrous Ben
Lovatt, whose arrival fractured the peace of the family into which
he was born, is now fully grown. With his unusual strength but
inadequate understanding, Ben, predictably, falls prey to
exploitation: he is robbed and cheated, employed as an unwitting
drug smuggler, and degraded to an object of scientific
investigation before finding a kind of truth in his tragic end. The
narrative is told from Ben's perspective and his story hovers
between the archetypal and the naturalistic. Yet this tension is
also the book's greatest achievement, for it boldly takes as a real
theme - not just a symbolic one - the limits of what it is to be
'human'. Lessing has always patrolled the boundaries of experience;
with this novel she drops us over the edge. (Kirkus UK)
Many will recall the powerful impact The Fifth Child, Doris
Lessing's 1988 novel, made on publication. Its account of idyllic
marital and parental bliss irredeemably shattered by the arrival of
the feral fifth child of the Lovatts made for unnerving and
compulsive reading. That child, Ben, now grown to legal maturity,
is the central character of this sequel, which picks up the fable
at the end of the childhood where the first book ended and takes
our primal, misunderstood, maladjusted teenager out into the world,
where again he meets mostly with mockery, fear and incomprehension
but with just enough kindness and openness to keep him afloat as
his adventures take him from London to the South of France and on
to South America in his restless quest for community, companionship
and peace. As in Mara and Dann, Doris Lessing in this newest book
returns to a plain, unadorned prose fit for fables; again, we have
a childlike perspective at the heart of the book; again, the world
in all its malevolence and misapprehenison swirls around at the
edge, while, occasionally, a strong character steps forward to try
to stake out some values and practise some good behaviour. Again,
it is one of Lessi
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