Globe and Mail review of new collection of Birth stories edited by Dede Crane and Lisa Moore

Birth writes
ZSUZSI GARTNER
October 25, 2008
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Twenty-Four True Stories About Childbirth
Edited by Dede Crane
and Lisa Moore

The cover belies the bloody, Gothic comedy of childbirth. An infant sleeps serenely, small spidery fingers curved to cheeks, efficiently wrapped in a cone of white blanket like a little amuse gueule - or a Communion wafer - ready to be plucked up and savoured. But inside Great Expectations there is blood aplenty (and copious other fluids, including tears), thundering pain, death and near-death experiences. The final month of pregnancy is Waiting for Godot, then suddenly the curtain rises on Act IV, Scene III of Macbeth.

Editors Dede Crane and Lisa Moore have assembled a hot pot of two dozen Canadian fiction writers and journalists, women and men, to reflect on the childbirth experience from the trenches. (Two of the contributors are close friends and another half a dozen I'm friendly with to various degrees, including the editor of this book section. It's from this outwardly compromised position that I'm writing.)

Read the rest of this Globe review here.