Ben, in the World

At eighteen, Ben is in the world, but not of it. He is too large, too awkward, too inhumanly made. Now estranged from his family, he must find his own path in life. From London and the south of France to Brazil and the mountains of the Andes. Ben is tossed about in a tumultuous search for his people, a reason for his being. How the world receives him, and, he fares in it will horrify and captivate until the novel's dramatic finale.

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

This "clear and horrific" sequel to Lessing's best-selling The Fifth Child "inspires true sympathy for her less-than-appealing Ben in this fish-out- of-water story. The reader is left wondering who the true savage is - modern man or the primitive?" "Another of Lessing's indictments of our species." "Surprisingly clumsy plotting for a writer of Lessing's stature." "It just didn't grab me."

"Doris Lessing is the kind of writer who has followers, not just readers," Lesley Hazleton once observed. But Lessing, whose novel The Golden Notebook was embraced as a feminist icon, has seldom told her followers exactly what they wanted to hear.