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Surrogate: a novel
Rachael Carter, a young nurse, is asked to house-sit by a colleague she barely knows. Dr Cate O'Reilly is travelling to Vietnam with her husband to adopt a baby. Before long the request has changed. The couple need a surrogate.
Rachael sees an opportunity to leave her own troubles behind, but is soon caught up in new struggles, both sexual and psychological. She discovers that this couple will do anything to see their dream of a child fulfilled.
Surrogate is an unflinching depiction of the issues around motherhood, both past and present, by a writer at the peak of her talents.
Rachael sees an opportunity to leave her own troubles behind, but is soon caught up in new struggles, both sexual and psychological. She discovers that this couple will do anything to see their dream of a child fulfilled.
Surrogate is an unflinching depiction of the issues around motherhood, both past and present, by a writer at the peak of her talents.
230 pages, Paperback
Published October 20, 2017
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14 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 3, 2018
Surrogacy is a topic I’m really interested in – I always have been, ever since I was at university. I lived on campus with a bunch of other people and one of the girls I became good friends with had been born with massive heart problems. She’d had numerous operations and had been told that she’d never be able to handle the strain of carrying a baby. I told her at the time that when we were both at that stage of our lives, I’d be a surrogate for her. Unfortunately, I never got the chance, because she died of complications from one of her heart issues when we were just 21. I’m in my mid-thirties now and having had two kids of my own, I still feel as though that was something I could’ve done. I was blessed with easy pregnancies, deliveries and recoveries.
The situation in this novel is a little different in that Rachael, a haematology nurse, doesn’t really know Cate. They’re not friends. But Cate asks Rachael to housesit for her and her husband whilst they go to Vietnam to finalise the adoption of a baby. When that doesn’t pan out, Cate and her husband Drum approach Rachael about potentially being a surrogate for them. Despite the fact that Cate and Drum returned from Vietnam, Rachael is still staying with them in their home – something they encourage. And then they move on to the next step of attempting to have the child they desire.
This book is set in Australia, so any surrogacy in Australia must be altruistic. You cannot profit from it, like you can in America where surrogates are paid a fee for their services, as well as having their medical bills covered. Here you can only accept reimbursement for medical bills and because of our public health system, it’s possible to have a baby and only be out of pocket for an ultrasound and that’s it. I think both my pregnancies cost me around $200 for the nuchal scan and whatever the price of my pregnancy vitamins was. That’s about it. However that doesn’t mean that there aren’t deals to be done….privately.
This isn’t a long book so I have to say, the development of what goes on between Rachael, Cate and Drum felt….rapid. Even from the very first approach to her, requesting that she think about being a surrogate, and it only kind of escalates from there. I think that Rachael is in a very emotionally vulnerable place when she’s approached. Around the time the book begins she has just experienced a broken engagement for quite complicated reasons. She lives close to her parents – she seems to have a somewhat difficult relationship with her mother and quite a distant one with her father. She doesn’t seem to have any friends. Cate and Drum are quite obviously wealthy, attractive and charismatic. I don’t get the feeling that Rachael was at all a strong or forceful personality. Rarely are we treated to much of her internal thoughts. She seems to make decisions quite rapidly and is motivated by something Drum offers her and the chance I think, to change her life and get out of the rut she seems stuck in.
This is a novel told in two parts – Rachael is present day (present day is 1998) but various flashbacks littered throughout the novel take us back to Rachael’s mother’s past, starting from a young girl farewelling her boyfriend, who is conscripted to Vietnam. They showcase the ups and downs of Mary’s life and there are quite a few of them. What Mary goes through probably wasn’t uncommon at the time and it has such a strong impact on her, right up until the present day portion of the novel. She also keeps these things to herself, which means that Rachael never really gets a chance to understand her mother either, which perhaps shapes their relationship. Mary doesn’t really understand Rachael’s decisions either. I found the flashbacks about Mary very powerful and they were a really interesting set up for the position that Rachael ended up finding herself in.
I really enjoyed this – Tracy Crisp packs an awful lot into this book for the page count and the writing is stunning. I definitely hope to read more from her in the future.
***A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for the purpose of an honest review***
The situation in this novel is a little different in that Rachael, a haematology nurse, doesn’t really know Cate. They’re not friends. But Cate asks Rachael to housesit for her and her husband whilst they go to Vietnam to finalise the adoption of a baby. When that doesn’t pan out, Cate and her husband Drum approach Rachael about potentially being a surrogate for them. Despite the fact that Cate and Drum returned from Vietnam, Rachael is still staying with them in their home – something they encourage. And then they move on to the next step of attempting to have the child they desire.
This book is set in Australia, so any surrogacy in Australia must be altruistic. You cannot profit from it, like you can in America where surrogates are paid a fee for their services, as well as having their medical bills covered. Here you can only accept reimbursement for medical bills and because of our public health system, it’s possible to have a baby and only be out of pocket for an ultrasound and that’s it. I think both my pregnancies cost me around $200 for the nuchal scan and whatever the price of my pregnancy vitamins was. That’s about it. However that doesn’t mean that there aren’t deals to be done….privately.
This isn’t a long book so I have to say, the development of what goes on between Rachael, Cate and Drum felt….rapid. Even from the very first approach to her, requesting that she think about being a surrogate, and it only kind of escalates from there. I think that Rachael is in a very emotionally vulnerable place when she’s approached. Around the time the book begins she has just experienced a broken engagement for quite complicated reasons. She lives close to her parents – she seems to have a somewhat difficult relationship with her mother and quite a distant one with her father. She doesn’t seem to have any friends. Cate and Drum are quite obviously wealthy, attractive and charismatic. I don’t get the feeling that Rachael was at all a strong or forceful personality. Rarely are we treated to much of her internal thoughts. She seems to make decisions quite rapidly and is motivated by something Drum offers her and the chance I think, to change her life and get out of the rut she seems stuck in.
This is a novel told in two parts – Rachael is present day (present day is 1998) but various flashbacks littered throughout the novel take us back to Rachael’s mother’s past, starting from a young girl farewelling her boyfriend, who is conscripted to Vietnam. They showcase the ups and downs of Mary’s life and there are quite a few of them. What Mary goes through probably wasn’t uncommon at the time and it has such a strong impact on her, right up until the present day portion of the novel. She also keeps these things to herself, which means that Rachael never really gets a chance to understand her mother either, which perhaps shapes their relationship. Mary doesn’t really understand Rachael’s decisions either. I found the flashbacks about Mary very powerful and they were a really interesting set up for the position that Rachael ended up finding herself in.
I really enjoyed this – Tracy Crisp packs an awful lot into this book for the page count and the writing is stunning. I definitely hope to read more from her in the future.
***A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for the purpose of an honest review***
November 13, 2017
Devoured this in one afternoon. It was wonderful. Tracy does amazing things with words and I adore her writing. I am terrible at writing reviews. You should read this book.
July 15, 2018
It took a little while for this novel to engage me: the characterisation of the central character is rather flat and it was not until the plot progressed that I realised why: women who are confident and secure in their relationships don’t find themselves manipulated into secret surrogacies…
Surrogate is the story of three women, Rachael Carter, a vulnerable young nurse who – out of the blue (or so it seems) – is asked to house-sit for Dr Cate O’Reilly while she travels to Vietnam to adopt a baby. This part of the story is set in the 1990s, while woven through it is the story of Mary Bowen, a relinquishing mother in the 1960s.
While Rachael and Mary are passive women who cave in to what others expect of them, Dr Cate knows exactly what she wants. She is married to a nice man called Drum (Drummond) and they have everything that a successful professional couple might want in 1990s Adelaide – except a child. The characterisation doesn’t allow the reader to see the emotional desperation that she feels, except that Drum’s feelings about her infertility are always expressed in terms of his concern for her.
And when the adoption goes wrong (for unexplained reasons) in Vietnam, Drum uses his concern about Cate’s vulnerability to pressure Rachael, not just into surrogacy but into keeping it secret.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/07/15/s...
Surrogate is the story of three women, Rachael Carter, a vulnerable young nurse who – out of the blue (or so it seems) – is asked to house-sit for Dr Cate O’Reilly while she travels to Vietnam to adopt a baby. This part of the story is set in the 1990s, while woven through it is the story of Mary Bowen, a relinquishing mother in the 1960s.
While Rachael and Mary are passive women who cave in to what others expect of them, Dr Cate knows exactly what she wants. She is married to a nice man called Drum (Drummond) and they have everything that a successful professional couple might want in 1990s Adelaide – except a child. The characterisation doesn’t allow the reader to see the emotional desperation that she feels, except that Drum’s feelings about her infertility are always expressed in terms of his concern for her.
And when the adoption goes wrong (for unexplained reasons) in Vietnam, Drum uses his concern about Cate’s vulnerability to pressure Rachael, not just into surrogacy but into keeping it secret.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/07/15/s...
October 11, 2022
“We want to ask you something. A favour. Something we want you to do for us…for various reasons we…have not been able to have children and we’ve been exploring…We’ve been looking at all our options and, as you know, our latest attempt…the adoption…well, things didn’t go according to plan…Our final option is surrogacy and Cate believes that you might be suitable–even willing to help us. Something a little more than a surrogate perhaps, in that we would need your egg as well as your womb…simply put: will you have a baby for us?”
“Maybe this is just what families were. A mess of individuals making the best of what they were given…It’s unconventional…Unorthodox. But it’s not unprecedented…A baby. As she said it to herself again, a picture grew in her mind and she saw herself, a hollow shadow, a black hole that moved through the air…This is how pregnant feels. This sense of a shadowy void, slowly filling.”
“You only get one mother…When you give up a baby…when you relinquish it…you spend years looking in prams and staring at kids on swings and you’re always thinking, I wonder if that’s my baby…all I could think was, Why would a woman want another woman’s baby?...Maybe he was born knowing that mothers do leave…Because how kind was a woman really if she could take another woman’s child? It all came back to that.”
“Maybe this is just what families were. A mess of individuals making the best of what they were given…It’s unconventional…Unorthodox. But it’s not unprecedented…A baby. As she said it to herself again, a picture grew in her mind and she saw herself, a hollow shadow, a black hole that moved through the air…This is how pregnant feels. This sense of a shadowy void, slowly filling.”
“You only get one mother…When you give up a baby…when you relinquish it…you spend years looking in prams and staring at kids on swings and you’re always thinking, I wonder if that’s my baby…all I could think was, Why would a woman want another woman’s baby?...Maybe he was born knowing that mothers do leave…Because how kind was a woman really if she could take another woman’s child? It all came back to that.”
August 13, 2020
I had to read this book quickly - it kept calling me back. I found all the characters equally mesmerising and frustrating and I think the writing is beautifully restrained and true. It is also a special joy to picture the places mentioned because they are places you have known all your life. I loved this book and I look forward to reading more from this author.
December 27, 2017
Tracy has written a topical and interesting novel. I loved the detailed descriptions of characters and the setting. Loved that the book set in Adelaide- my home town. Loved it - read it as soon as you can.
May 8, 2021
I enjoyed this book which was an easy read. It may be a difficult read for anyone with personal experience of adoption or infertility .
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews