Maybe Baby

July 9, 2001
One seemingly innocent lie swiftly snowballs to preposterous proportions in this farcical contemporary romance. Harp Cove, Maine, is "The Way Life Should Be"—quaint, friendly and filled with good-humored gossips. While visiting the picturesque little town, Dr. Delaney Poole has a one-night stand with renowned ladies' man Jack Shepard and is stunned to learn soon after that she is pregnant. A year later, Delaney returns to Harp Cove with her infant daughter to assume the position of town doctor, only to find that Jack is her landlord. For some unknown reason, Delaney had intended to pass herself off as a divorcée, but when she sees Jack and the sultry teenybopper he's with, she invents a husband who lives in another region. To convince Jack that she does have a husband named Jim—or is it Joe?—Delaney has to slice a couple of months off of Emily's age, redo her tax form and stuff her closet with men's clothes. Delaney is a terrible liar, however, and Jack sees through her charade. The only thing that perplexes him, and the reader, is why Delaney feels the need to lie in the first place. Fox (Compulsion), a veteran author of historical romances, has made the mistake of letting silly shenanigans and screwball behavior overshadow the romance here, and this debut contemporary is unlikely to earn her a broader readership.

January 23, 2006
Inspired by a letter written to Salon.com requesting more stories about people who chose not to have children, senior editor Leibovich brought together a broad spectrum of writers to create a refreshing, sometimes painful, collection of essays in which, to quote the subtitle, "28 Writers Tell the Truth About Skepticism, Infertility, Baby Lust, Childlessness, Ambivalence, and How They Made the Biggest Decision of Their Lives." Lionel Shriver celebrates her adults-only existence in "The Baby Stops Here"; Amy Richards goes through the seldom-discussed procedure of "selective reduction" in "Triple Threat"; and Kathryn Harrison cares for her dying grandmother as well as her newborn daughter in the beautiful "Cradle to Grave." Other standout essays include Neal Pollack's, defending his right to have only one child (his response to the often-voiced concern "Won't he be spoiled if he's the only one?" is "Not with our credit card debt"), and Rick Moody's, revealing his early-in-life assessment of children as "bloodthirsty dwarves." This bittersweet anthology is the perfect antidote to readers tired of the number of books lauding child-rearing and its many joys.