Doris Lessing’s Ben is still – rather unsurprisingly
– a problematic figure even in this sequel to The Fifth Child. Yet, whereas The
Fifth Child was one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read, Ben, in the World didn’t quite have the
same effect on me.
The first of the two books was fundamentally
all about the mother’s struggles with the foetus and, later, the boy. This
second book is about Ben’s fight, essentially, for survival. Maybe because of
the protected life that I live – much like Ben’s family – I read this book with
interest, but not with as much as empathy as I had when I read its prequel.
In the first book, Ben gave readers the creeps.
In this one, the readers ultimately want Ben to find his way in the world, but,
hell no, no reader would hope of bumping into Ben in real life and actually
help him out.
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