On first reading Doris Lessing’s “The Fifth Child” (1988)

On a Sunday in October 1990, I went to the library at the University of Pennsylvania to do some reading and studying for classes that week (in my doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory). While I was there, I also picked up Doris Lessing's 1988 novel "The Fifth Child", which my girlfriend Carolyn had recommended to me. I only got back home from the library after midnight, and when I went to bed at 2 am, I thought I'd read a couple pages of Lessing's novel before I went to sleep. Instead, I finished the gripping novel at 5 am, and it became a central text for my dissertation.(Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 April 2025)