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Doris Lessing's uncategorizable oeuvre reached strange new heights in 1988 with the publication of her short novel The Fifth Child. The story couldn't be simpler. In the England of the 1970s, a couple determined to live out a dream that many of their generation have rejected -- the big family in the old house with the pretty garden -- conceive a child that may or may not be human. From that moment on, the boy, their fifth, becomes the alien force that will tear their dream to pieces. Profoundly ambiguous and unsettling, The Fifth Child is a weird novel that raises questions about parenthood, family, and the impenetrable depths of nature.

Header Image: The Changeling by Henry Fuseli (1780)

Additional music: "Fast Bossa Nova: Falling Stars" by Dee Yan-Key

REFERENCES

Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child
\nDoris Lessing, Shikasta
\nM. R. James, weird fiction author
\nAnne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
\nWeird Studies, Episode 67 on \u201cHellier\u201d
\nVictoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets
\nDavid Icke, conspiracy theorist
\nDeros, underground beings from the fiction of Richard Sharpe Shaver
\nHieronymus Bosch, Dutch Renaissance painter
\nWeird Studies, Episode 86 on \u201cThe Sandman\u201d
\nSlavoj \u017di\u017eek, The Puppet and the Dwarf
\nLouis Sass, \u201cThe Land of Unreality: On the Phenomenology of the Schizophrenic Break\u201d
\nLouis Sass, Madness and Modernism
\nGiorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
\nRichard Thorpe (dir.), The Wizard of Oz
\nFrank L. Baum, The Wizard of Oz
\nWeird Studies, bonus episode on Adventure Time
\nJames Hillman, The Soul\u2019s Code
\nDoris Lessing, Ben in the World
\nRoman Polanski (dir.), Rosemary\u2019s Baby
\nRichard Donner (dir.), The Omen
\nDonald Cammell (dir.), Demon Seed