BOOKS
NEW DIRECTIONS
THE IMMORTAL BARTFUSS. By Aharon Appelfeld. Weidenfeld and
Nicolson. $15.95 .
THE FIFTH CHILD. By Doris Lessing. Alfred A. Knopf. $16.95.
Despite their significant difference, these two novels–
really novellas, that favored form of Henry James-by Doris Les–
sing and Aaron Appelfeld have some striking things in common .
Both are little gems . Both have themes spun out of fantasies
grounded in reality . Both have symbolic meanings hovering in the
background. Both are minimalist in execution, not in subject; just
the reverse of much recent American fiction.
Lessing's new short novel reminds one a bit ofJ ane Austen but
with a Mary Shelley twist, as it weaves a modern version of a family
life, partly within, but mostly outside of, the emancipated anti-family
norms of the sexual liberation that reached its height in the pseudo–
revolutionary lifestyles of the sixties.
The Fifth Child
is a harrowing,
out-of-this-world tale of a very ordinary couple, nurturing a seem–
ingly normal, middle-class existence, bringing up a large family in a
big suburban house - big enough to be filled up by their relatives on
vacations and holidays. Except for the fanatic intensity of the
couple's belief in a children's crusade, that is, to populate the house
with babies, they start their lives away from big-city depravities in a
fairly humdrum fashion . Child follows child in a glow of happiness
that wears down the commuting father and the nursing mother, un–
til the arrival of the fifth infant. Relatives flood the house, some
helping, others draining the depleted energies and resources of the
ideologically-driven couple. The father gradually loses his zeal for
fatherhood, but the mother insists on the fulflllments of motherhood
with her last bit of strength . .
Finally, this utopia of fertility comes to an end with the birth of
the fifth child, a biological mistake, retarded mentally but advanced
physically . The monstrous offspring is referred to by both parents,
partly realistically, partly mythically, as a throwback to some early
species of cavemen . As the physical prodigy grows older, the father
is ready to give up, but the mother, true to her rigid principles of
motherhood, continues to pretend the fifth child is part of the normal
household . Finally, the intended and extended family falls apart.
