Harriet and David want the same things: a family and a happy home. They marry, and at first all is idyllic, but with the fifth pregnancy things begin to sour. After a difficult birth, he develops faster and grows bigger than ordinary infants; he is unloving and disliked by his siblings. Harriet finds herself faced with a dark sub-continent of human nature, unable to cope. Lessing has written an ominously tangible novel, a powerfully simple contemporary horror story that makes for compulsive reading.