Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008. The Prize is given for the entire body of a person’s work over his or her lifetime. In Ms. Lessing’s case, that includes a good deal of science-fiction novels. (The Nobel Prize committee can’t say, “We’re only giving this to her because she wrote that one book.” It doesn’t work that way.) She’s not the first Nobel Laureate who didn’t write strictly realistic contemporary or historical fiction; see Friday’s review for more details. In any case, Ms. Lessing’s science fiction period was mostly in the 1970s, and it included dystopian as well as classic-style SF work. It was not well-received by critics who loved her straight fiction novels. I don’t know very much about them otherwise, but she wrote them, they exist, and she won the highest prize awarded in literature.

This novel, however, isn’t science fiction, in particular; it exists on the edges of Gothic horror and perhaps fantasy. Harriet and David meet at a party in the mid-1960s. Each is a bit of a throwback to an earlier time, in that during an era of sexual and personal liberty, they both have nonexistent or very small sexual histories and they both want a large family with a stay-at-home mother. They start this family nearly immediately after they get married, although not by choice; it’s a financial strain on both of them. Fortunately, David’s father has money, but even so, the fact that they produce five children in seven years is a problem. Unfortunately, the fifth child, Ben, is even more of a problem. Harriet had an entirely miserable pregnancy; she felt as if he were trying to kick his way out from the inside. Once he is born, it is obvious that he isn’t normal — as Harriet points out right away, he looks like a goblin or a troll. He is also violent, and a danger to himself and everyone around him. What can they do with him?

The book is less than 140 pages; most of what happens in the book, what with David and Harriet meeting and falling in love and having four kids, happens within the first 50 pages or so. After Ben’s birth, the family falls apart. Paul, who is barely a year older than Ben, is basically neglected since after birth, because of the difficulty of the pregnancy and then the problems of dealing with an unusual baby after birth. Ben is incredibly big and incredibly strong; on top of that, he’s advanced in many ways (walking early, going straight to sentences while talking) and has a violent temperament. The three kids older than Paul all find their own ways to leave the house, as they don’t want to be around their younger brother, either.

I didn’t like Harriet, and not just because I found her mealy-mouthed and passive to a fault. I can understand protesting against what were perceived as excessive sexual freedom, but I cannot understand why she has to be so sanctimonious about it. She made, I believe, one actual decision in the book; everything else was just accepting what happened as her lot in life. David isn’t much better; I was, of course, glad that he wasn’t forcing a life of motherhood on a woman who didn’t want it, but he spent a good deal of time also being sickeningly passive and absent. He also made a choice I did not agree with, regarding Ben’s care. Ms. Lessing doesn’t seem to like her characters all that much, either; neither has very many personality traits other than disagreeing with new social norms. I mean, yes, they both seem to love their children, but that isn’t particularly something that defines them sharply. David displays one example of having his own mind, rather than subsuming it in the communal historical hive mind. Other than that, though, these are not nice or likeable characters.

While the story is supposedly about a throwback, changeling, or demon child, it’s also (as the back says, and I concur) about the difficulties of having a non-standard or disabled child, especially one who confuses the medical establishment. Many of them do: we are only now learning about the varieties and spectrum of autism, let alone non-verbal learning disabilities and the true reach of ADHD. It is especially hard on the stay-at-home parent, who is traditionally the mother. Historically speaking, the mother was also blamed for causing the child to be as he or she was, and I think that Harriet’s overly-traditional mind also struggled with this in the story. Of course, whatever Ben is (it isn’t identified) is contrasted with a child of one of Harriet’s sisters, who has Down’s Syndrome. Amy, that child, is always happy, smiling, and pleasant, although she will need care the rest of her life.

Regarding genre, this book has elements of fantasy and horror. If Ben really is a changeling of some sort (or, at least, the 20th-century version of one), then that harkens back to fairy stories in earlier times. His violent behavior is calling upon a tradition of stories like Rosemary’s Baby and Omen. Universal themes and truth aside, I suspect this was about the worst possible place to start with Ms. Lessing’s oeuvre, and I’m not sure I would recommend this book in particular. However, I did enjoy her writing style and I am looking forward to trying one of her more well-known novels.