Author: Jen Cumming
Publisher: Colborne Communications
Rating: WARTY!
This novel is not to be confused with Ms Conception by Pamela Power, which I have not read, although that name, wonderful as it is, I think is beaten by 'Jen Cumming', as the author of a novel about pregnancy! This story details (and I do mean details) a woman's desperate (and I do mean desperate) effort to get pregnant.
You would think, with all we hear from our religious overlords, that pregnancy is something that happens as soon as two people from complementary genders look at each other, and especially so if they're teenagers, but the truth is that even a fertile couple has only about a one in five chance of conceiving during any given month (assuming average sexual activity).
Infertility affects about one in ten couples, and it has been rising of late, but this may be due to the fact that more and more couples are choosing to have children later in life, whereas peak fertility occurs between about eighteen and twenty-five. Women over forty have about a one in ten chance of becoming pregnant even with assisted fertility treatments, whereas men are the scalawags who can successfully father children much later in life, but, as Woody Allen remarked, they're too old and frail by then to pick them up....
It turns out that about 40% of cases of infertility are due the male partner and the same for the female, with the final 20% due to both partners equally. It can be devastating, even marriage-wrecking, but that very much depends upon the individuals. The author evidently underwent these treatments, which in turn no doubt provided the raw material for this story, but this doesn't tell us how much of the story she tells is personal to her and her partner as opposed to being completely made-up from scratch.
I hope it wasn't too personal, because I have to say that I neither liked nor warmed-up to either main character in this novel - or to any of the other characters for that matter. I did not like Abigail Nichols or Jack, her husband (yes, another tedious novel with a main character named Jack!). The two of them bordered dangerously on alcoholism and were so one-dimensional that I almost couldn't see them at all. The entire novel is focused on getting pregnant and then being pregnant. It's like this is the only raison d'être for either of these people, and particularly for Abigail. Jack was notably neglectful and even dysfunctional at times. They literally had no life beyond conception, which makes them completely uninteresting as characters or people and rather scary as potential parents.
As I said, I don't know how autobiographical this novel was, if at all, so this may or may not have been what life was like, but it if was at all autobiographical, it's very sad. I don't doubt that there actually are people where the "need" to get pregnant overrides everything else in their life, but this doesn't mean it makes for either an engrossing or an edifying story.
What this actually felt like was the Bill Murray movie Groundhog day, where we kept going through the same things over and over again, with only minor changes, but unlike the movie, this was not amusing, it was simply boring. Instead of being moving or empathy-inducing, Abigail was merely irritating. I kept wanting someone to grab her by the shoulders, look her in the eye and say, "Abby, grow a pair before you fizzle out like a balloon farting around the room until it collapses, shriveled and flat."
It was pretty obvious that pregnancy was going to result sooner or later, so it's no spoiler to say it, but it means that this novel really had nothing new or different to offer, and the fact that Abigail was a chronic whiner was off-putting. I know that people in her position are entitled to some self-pity, but it seemed endless with Abigail, and it didn't help that it was told from her first person PoV, which magnified and amplified this and made it far worse than it could have been.
The book blurb assures us: "One thing she knows for sure: a healthy sense of humor (and the occasional glass of red wine) is the best coping strategy," but this was not true at all. There was nothing healthy about Abigail, and there certainly wasn't "the occasional glass of red wine." There was copious amounts of drink, and times when she and her husband got outright drunk. What is this couple, nineteen years old?The sense of humor was almost completely absent. Once in a while there would be a remark or observation that was actually funny, but for the most part any attempt at humor was washed out by the endless and tedious whining and self-pity. The funniest thing about it was, as another reviewer has pointed out, that the clichéd image on the front cover looks more like someone's butt than ever it does a pregnant abdomen! But random covers are what you get when you don't self publish.
One of the saddest things is that Abigail seriously needed some psychiatric treatment or therapy, and she wasn't getting it, and no one - not even the many medical personnel she encountered - noticed how bad her condition was. Her mental state and her drinking problem were not normal and not healthy. Her work was being affected, although god only knows why she persisted in working in such a hostile and genderist environment. Her place of employment was as politically incorrect and inappropriate as you can get, yet never once was it ever hinted that there was anything wrong here, or that serious change was called for.
In many ways Abigail was her own worst enemy. She never told her employers what she was up to, and so was seen as taking endless, 'frivolous' time off work. Her obsession with getting pregnant was actually interfering with her work because of her repeated absences, and then she has the hypocrisy to complain that the new hire is stealing all her resources? The new hire actually had all the hallmarks of a corporate spy, but since I didn't finish this novel, I can't say if she actually was.
The thing is that Abigail never actually seemed to work. She was all about delegation and the writing made it seem like she spent the bulk of her time doing activities related to getting pregnant and the hell with her work beyond a sporadic catch-up blitz. She tells us how much time she spends waiting around in medical clinics, but instead of taking her laptop and working from where-ever she was, she sat around doing nothing, or she took a book to read. Great work ethic, Abigail. This woman is neither smart nor organized, nor is she a responsible employee.
This wasn't even the worst part of Abigail's behavior. Before she even considered approaching reliable and scientifically-proven medical treatment, she ran around trying all manner of bullshit woo 'remedies', which of course failed. When she did return to reality, she didn't like the medical doctor she had - or at least not his abusive time-keeping, yet she was evidently too timid or lacking in motivation to change and find a better one.
She whined constantly about her mother in law, who was, I confess and royal pain in the ass, but then she also whined about her sister who accidentally became pregnant, and her husband's ex-girlfriend who also became pregnant. I don't know who raised Abigail to think it's all about Abigail, and that there's something wrong with other people having a life independently of hers, but it was really quite sickening to repeatedly read of the lavish pity parties to which she treated herself on these occasions. Abigail was not remotely likable at all.
Another issue was money. We were told so many things in this novel and shown very little, and one of the worst things was the money question. We were told time and time again how expensive these treatments would be, and how it would have to be put-off because of the cost, and yet suddenly we're doing all these supposedly expensive things and money isn't an object. Her husband magically gets yet another bonus whenever they need cash for something. It was farcical. Never once was any thought spared for the more than forty million Americans who live in poverty, some of whom are no doubt infertile and who have no access to the resources which Abigail did, and no resources to raise a child even if they had one.
Abigail and Jack were both high-end professionals, evidently paid handsomely for their "work" and yet they appeared to appreciate none of it. They had everything they wanted, never went asking for food or clothes (or anything), and yet Abigail still selfishly wallowed in how badly-done-to she was. Anyone is entitled to feel bad about their circumstances once in a while, but Abigail made an art-form out of it. Like I said, she was not a likable person.
Likewise there was hardly a word spoken about adoption. I don't recall seeing where this story was set, but I may have missed that. I assume it was Canada since the author is Canadian, and Canada has some 45,000 orphaned children. The US has over twice that number and a further 400,000 living without permanent families, yet adoption was barely mentioned in this novel. A really good educational opportunity as squandered there.
So, in short, I did not like this novel. I found it obnoxious at times and pitiful (in the wrong way) at other times. There was nothing to get me interested, let alone keep my interest, and it quickly became too tedious to read when there are other authors with better conceptions awaiting. Life's too short and too pregnant with opportunity to live there with your legs in the air waiting for the story to finish anesthetizing you.
