The Fifth Child - Doris Lessing

This horror story about a cuckoo in the nest did a good job of portraying the rapid and total unravelling of a 'perfect' family after the birth of an unexpected and unloveable fifth child. I particularly liked the description of the mother's inability to abandon her monstrous child even when it meant defying the rest of the family and sacrificing her chance at resuming a peaceful life with her older children. It covered similar ground to We Need to Talk About Kevin but was written more as a straightforward disaster narrative rather than exploring the nature vs nurture question. I was a little uncomfortable with the explicit labelling of the child (towards the end, by his mother) as a genetic "throwback" - this seemed unconvincing and to me detracted from the very real air of menace that was created when he was simply described without explanation.