On the eve of her thirty-seventh birthday, Rose Ainsworth finds herself at a crossroads. With her most fertile years ebbing away, she feels she must decide once and for all whether or not she wants to have a child. The only trouble is, Rose has no idea.
What follows is a story which chronicles a year in Rose's life in which she wrestles with a decision she knows will define the rest of her life, turning to friends, family, Dr Phil and her dentist in hopes of knowing which choice is right for her and her husband, Jim.
Rose's story is a topical one which I'm sure many women will relate too. Now that society isn't hyper-focused on driving women down a singular path to marriage, motherhood and domesticity, and women have the freedom to choose their own destiny, it can feel impossible to know which choice is the right one: whether they will get just as much meaning and joy from other things or whether they will always regret not having a family. Throughout the novel, Rose encounters many a common enemy of the childless woman - the tactless colleague, the nosy old woman and the overbearing mother-in-law among them - and her journey highlights how friends having babies forces you to examine your own life, choices and future.
Unfortunately, Rose as a vessel for this story just did not work for me. She is such an off-putting character - a judgmental, condescending prude who sneers at literally everything other women say or do - from refusing to sacrifice a career when her children are born to having a baby shower for a second child. She seems disappointed in almost every version of motherhood she encounters and her inner monologue is littered with criticisms and snide remarks. For example, when thinking about her colleague taking her fianće's last name, Rose notes that 'She always felt a twinge of disappointment and disrespect for the women who did.'
Later on, she behaves appallingly when a younger colleague, Yuki, turns to her for support, opting to shame Yuki and make her disapproval clear when Yuki is feeling incredibly vulnerable. This episode,mout of the whole narrative, left a really sour taste in my mouth; was the author really expecting me to root for such a callous, selfish person?
The author casually reinforces the idea that men are incompetent and women are martyrs, as if this old-fashioned dynamic should be taken as read. For instance, Rose's sister Daisy does not feel that she can visit Rose because her husband 'won’t notice when the toilet paper and milk run out', while Rose does all the cleaning herself in preparation for a visit from Jim's parents because 'if Rose gave him additional tasks, his brain would short circuit and she’d have to retrain him, a job for which she had neither the time, interest, nor energy.' This is such a regressive, harmful portrayal of both men and women, and one which I was surprised to see.
Other problematic elements of the book include Rose's micro agressions - she can't remember the name of Indian colleague's fiancé despite being told at least a dozen times and thinks said colleague should keep her shorter, less foreign-sounding name. She also muses on adopting with a completely sincere white saviour complex: 'The more Rose thought about it, the more the idea of jetting off to Haiti or Ukraine to rescue an infant from an orphanage seemed heroic and romantic.'
Minor characters such as Yuki and another colleague, Rima, are so undeveloped that they might as well not be there, and even Jim, Rose’s husband, is given little in the way of discernible characteristics. Every conversation between him and Rose feels stilted and unnatural, not the easy patter of a comfortable long term couple, and I never had any sense of a deep bond between them. Rose herself doesn't have much to her either, and the author spends much of the novel adding new tidbits in an effort to make her seem more like an actual person.
Furthermore, the plot felt very episodic and contrived: literally everything that befalls Rose is an opportunity to reflect on whether or not she wants a baby and, after a while, it was rather repetitive and tedious.
On a final note, is this story taking place in the mid-00s? Rose and her sister are described as being born in the late 1960s but Rose is 37, not in her 50s.
Thank you to NetGalley and Vagrant Press for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.