Books, Arts & Manners: Family-Planning at First Sight

The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing (Knopf 133 pp„ $16.95)

Harriet and David Lovatt won’t stop having children. Throughout the “greedy and selfish Sixties,” Harriet had been an anomaly: a Fifties throwback, an uptight wallflower, and, frankly, a husband-hound. David was an architect, a “judicious” drinker, and a “non-dancer.” At the opening of Doris Lessing’s latest novel, The Fifth Child, Harriet and David meet at a party and it’s family-planning at first sight. They get married and set out to do the only thing either one seems capable of: tirelessly and ruthlessly churn out babies.

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Jeff Giles

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The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing (Knopf 133 pp„ $16.95)

Harriet and David Lovatt won’t stop having children. Throughout the “greedy and selfish Sixties,” Harriet had been an anomaly: a Fifties throwback, an uptight wallflower, and, frankly, a husband-hound. David was an architect, a “judicious” drinker, and a “non-dancer.” At the opening of Doris Lessing’s latest novel, The Fifth Child, Harriet and David meet at a party and it’s family-planning at first sight. They get married and set out to do the only thing either one seems capable of: tirelessly and ruthlessly churn out babies.