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The Fifth Child Audiobook
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Doris Lessing's contemporary gothic horror story—centered on the birth of a baby who seems less than human—probes society's unwillingness to recognize its own brutality.
Harriet and David Lovatt, parents of four children, have created an idyll of domestic bliss in defiance of the social trends of late 1960s England. While around them crime and unrest surge, the Lovatts are certain that their old-fashioned contentment can protect them from the world outside—until the birth of their fifth baby. Gruesomely goblin-like in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong and violent, Ben has nothing innocent or infant-like about him. As he grows older and more terrifying, Harriet finds she cannot love him, David cannot bring himself to touch him, and their four older children are afraid of him. Understanding that he will never be accepted anywhere, Harriet and David are torn between their instincts as parents and their shocked reaction to this fierce and unlovable child whose existence shatters their belief in a benign world.
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“The implications of this slim, gripping work are ominous… Lessing indicts those in authority who refuse to acknowledge responsibility for the violence inherent in mankind.”
— Publishers Weekly
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About Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia in 1919, and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. At fifteen she left school and worked in Salisbury. After the break-up of her first marriage she became involved in radical politics. She remarried in 1945, but in 1949 she left for England with her youngest child and from then on supported herself and her son by her writing. She is the author of more than twenty books, including novels, stories, reportage, poems, and plays. Recurring themes in her writing are her concerns with politics, the changing destiny of women, and a fear of technological disaster.
About Sue Pitkin
Sue Pitkin began her performing life as a moonbeam in a British Forces pantomime in Northern Germany, attracted as much by the treat of ginger ale in the dressing room and time off school as by the fun of the performance. These days her performances are mostly limited to audiobooks and her whiskey education program, pursuits which she has found complement each other perfectly.