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Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories about Childbirth
Unique in its honesty and depth, Great Expectations collects 24 moving stories in an anthology perfect for any parent-to-be. Lynn Coady describes her own traumatic teenage pregnancy and the anguish of giving her child up for adoption. Peter Behrens details the two extremes he ricocheted between during his first child’s helplessness and joy. Christy Ann Conlin describes pregnancy and birth at age 40. Anne Fleming contemplates her same-sex partner’s artificial insemination and the subsequent birth of their daughter. Edited by two acclaimed, prize-winning authors — both of whom also contribute stories — this stunning collection explores childbirth across age, sexuality, race, and gender, uniting everyone who has been touched by this awesome experience.
- GenresNonfictionMemoir
400 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
6 people are currently reading
51 people want to read
About the author
Dede Crane
8 books5 followersDede Crane is the author of the literary novel Sympathy, which was a finalist for the Victoria Butler Book Prize. She has also published the teen novel, The 25 Pains of Kennedy Baines. Her first published story, “Seers,” appeared in Grain magazine and was short listed for the CBC Literary Award; she has since been published in numerous literary journals.
Dede has also co-edited, with author Lisa Moore, a collection of non-fiction stories about the experience of giving birth. She is currently working on a second teen novel, Poster Boy. A former professional ballet dancer and choreographer, Dede Crane has studied Buddhist psychology and psychokinetics at Naropa Institute in Colorado and the Body-Mind Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts. She currently calls Victoria, B.C. home.
From the Author:
I started writing because of a bad back. No longer able to dance and choreograph but still pregnant with creative energy, words became my new, untrained limbs. Though not a word person by instinct, I did have a connection to the world of storytelling. I had always been an excellent daydreamer. I could keep a daydream going all day, go to sleep and wake up and begin where I left off. And these imagined worlds were equally as vivid as the so called real one.
Going from being such a physical person to a sedentary writer (also hard on the back) was a big change but it was time, I think, to give my voice its due. Moving to Vancouver Island was the final other catalyst. There was something about the power of the land here, in particular the trees, that urged voice. I know this may sound strange but unlike the east coast where the forest isn't wild anymore, the trees here still have stories to tell. And they want them told. I will also add that I love being around writers. Writers are sexy.
Dede has also co-edited, with author Lisa Moore, a collection of non-fiction stories about the experience of giving birth. She is currently working on a second teen novel, Poster Boy. A former professional ballet dancer and choreographer, Dede Crane has studied Buddhist psychology and psychokinetics at Naropa Institute in Colorado and the Body-Mind Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts. She currently calls Victoria, B.C. home.
From the Author:
I started writing because of a bad back. No longer able to dance and choreograph but still pregnant with creative energy, words became my new, untrained limbs. Though not a word person by instinct, I did have a connection to the world of storytelling. I had always been an excellent daydreamer. I could keep a daydream going all day, go to sleep and wake up and begin where I left off. And these imagined worlds were equally as vivid as the so called real one.
Going from being such a physical person to a sedentary writer (also hard on the back) was a big change but it was time, I think, to give my voice its due. Moving to Vancouver Island was the final other catalyst. There was something about the power of the land here, in particular the trees, that urged voice. I know this may sound strange but unlike the east coast where the forest isn't wild anymore, the trees here still have stories to tell. And they want them told. I will also add that I love being around writers. Writers are sexy.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 2, 2019
Beautiful read with lots of variety in terms of childbirth stories, from different walks to life and different philosophies.
June 2, 2019
Often intense, always transformative - I love to hear birth stories.
November 13, 2018
Loved this one - I loved the fact that it contained many different aspects of childbirth from some very talented Canadian authors. I'd recommend this one to any pregnant woman!
May 29, 2009
In the preface to their co-conceived anthology of birth stories by Canadian writers, editors Dede Crane and Lisa Moore declare "birth is everybody's miracle."
While this sounds like sentimental hoo-ha, it is technically true.
(If you didn't know anything about how babies were born and someone told you that women have to squeeze the eight-pound darlings out of their vaginas, would you believe them?)
Crane and Moore's next editorial assertion, however, isn't as defensible.
Birth, they say, is "complex, dramatic, full of human strength and frailty, fear, and humour, as well as invaluable wisdom" and is "all the stuff of good stories."
The problem with this statement is that birth stories come into the world along with babies.
Which makes birth stories as common as, well, dirt.
As such, most people don't care about the infinite details of anyone else's birth story the same way that most people don't care about the infinite details of anyone else's baby.
Given that Victoria-based Crane and St. John's-based Moore are writers of some renown, however, it stands to reason that the birth stories they (and their fellow Canadian novelists, journalists, and non-fiction specialists) would share would be buoyed by their literary merit.
And while the contributors list for Great Expectations includes some of this country's better-known writers (not to mention six men), it suffers from the same plight of most anthologies: uneven material.
The mark of a successful anthology is that the good material far outweighs the bad or even indifferent.
Luckily, this anthology contains a number of surprising and interesting stories, enough to make it worth adding to your library.
Moore's, incidentally, is one of the best of the bunch, including as it does the following speech from her husband, given at a critical moment in the delivery of their first child:
"Lisa, this doctor says he doesn't like your personality. He has asked you to shut up. Apparently, you might die, and they are doing an emergency surgery. They can't waste a second. The thing is, this guy is about to cut you open with a knife, and so I think maybe we should try to stay on his good side."
Some of the best entries work this darkly funny vein. Globe and Mail foreign correspondent Stephanie Nolen's entry is a satisfyingly profane description of a thwarted natural birth.
"I thought I just flew 7,000 kilometres to give birth with a midwife," she writes, "so I didn't end up on my goddamn back with my knees in my ears."
Novelist Karen Connelly is fearless in her description of how being a sexual abuse survivor impacts her labour, while Lynn Coady is (surprise! surprise!) funny and sad in her story of teenage pregnancy and giving up her child for adoption.
Poet Esta Spalding is tenderly elegiac, describing the twins she carried and the single child that survived. Edeet Ravel's contribution features a manic humour that makes for a nice change from the tragic romances on offer in her politically charged novels.
Some of the less original offerings ("I fell in love with my child instantly!" "The pain and hardship of labour and birth were all worth it!") are hobbled not only by the everyone-has-a-unique-birth-story problem but also by one of craft.
That's because in terms of story, birth is pretty straightforward: You start out with a hugely pregnant woman and you end up with a slightly less swollen woman and a baby.
It takes a remarkable writer to be both completely and starkly honest while simultaneously making a story we already know the end of interesting.
The male contributors, such as Giller Prize-winner Joseph Boyden and Brick magazine editor Michael Redhill, have a further difficulty in that they have to endlessly note that their role in the birth they're recounting doesn't compare to that of their partners.
That said, Edmonton-based Curtis Gillespie and Governor General's Award-winner Peter Behrens, both novelists, write well and movingly of their partners' birthing experiences.
A final, minor quibble is that the links between several of the writers are a bit too obvious. Coady's story, for instance, is followed by Christy Ann Conlin's, which references Coady.
Crane's story of her fourth birth is followed by that of her husband, novelist Bill Gaston.
It is natural that the editors would have asked writer friends to contribute (and even that writers would be friends with other writers of about the same vintage), but for readers, it may be best not to know.
All of that said, while Great Expectations didn't fulfil all one's expectations, it is still a good and earnest addition to the growing store of Canadian writing on pregnancy and mothering.
(You're just the cutest little anthology of birth stories! Yes you are!)
(from my review which appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press January 4, 2009.)
While this sounds like sentimental hoo-ha, it is technically true.
(If you didn't know anything about how babies were born and someone told you that women have to squeeze the eight-pound darlings out of their vaginas, would you believe them?)
Crane and Moore's next editorial assertion, however, isn't as defensible.
Birth, they say, is "complex, dramatic, full of human strength and frailty, fear, and humour, as well as invaluable wisdom" and is "all the stuff of good stories."
The problem with this statement is that birth stories come into the world along with babies.
Which makes birth stories as common as, well, dirt.
As such, most people don't care about the infinite details of anyone else's birth story the same way that most people don't care about the infinite details of anyone else's baby.
Given that Victoria-based Crane and St. John's-based Moore are writers of some renown, however, it stands to reason that the birth stories they (and their fellow Canadian novelists, journalists, and non-fiction specialists) would share would be buoyed by their literary merit.
And while the contributors list for Great Expectations includes some of this country's better-known writers (not to mention six men), it suffers from the same plight of most anthologies: uneven material.
The mark of a successful anthology is that the good material far outweighs the bad or even indifferent.
Luckily, this anthology contains a number of surprising and interesting stories, enough to make it worth adding to your library.
Moore's, incidentally, is one of the best of the bunch, including as it does the following speech from her husband, given at a critical moment in the delivery of their first child:
"Lisa, this doctor says he doesn't like your personality. He has asked you to shut up. Apparently, you might die, and they are doing an emergency surgery. They can't waste a second. The thing is, this guy is about to cut you open with a knife, and so I think maybe we should try to stay on his good side."
Some of the best entries work this darkly funny vein. Globe and Mail foreign correspondent Stephanie Nolen's entry is a satisfyingly profane description of a thwarted natural birth.
"I thought I just flew 7,000 kilometres to give birth with a midwife," she writes, "so I didn't end up on my goddamn back with my knees in my ears."
Novelist Karen Connelly is fearless in her description of how being a sexual abuse survivor impacts her labour, while Lynn Coady is (surprise! surprise!) funny and sad in her story of teenage pregnancy and giving up her child for adoption.
Poet Esta Spalding is tenderly elegiac, describing the twins she carried and the single child that survived. Edeet Ravel's contribution features a manic humour that makes for a nice change from the tragic romances on offer in her politically charged novels.
Some of the less original offerings ("I fell in love with my child instantly!" "The pain and hardship of labour and birth were all worth it!") are hobbled not only by the everyone-has-a-unique-birth-story problem but also by one of craft.
That's because in terms of story, birth is pretty straightforward: You start out with a hugely pregnant woman and you end up with a slightly less swollen woman and a baby.
It takes a remarkable writer to be both completely and starkly honest while simultaneously making a story we already know the end of interesting.
The male contributors, such as Giller Prize-winner Joseph Boyden and Brick magazine editor Michael Redhill, have a further difficulty in that they have to endlessly note that their role in the birth they're recounting doesn't compare to that of their partners.
That said, Edmonton-based Curtis Gillespie and Governor General's Award-winner Peter Behrens, both novelists, write well and movingly of their partners' birthing experiences.
A final, minor quibble is that the links between several of the writers are a bit too obvious. Coady's story, for instance, is followed by Christy Ann Conlin's, which references Coady.
Crane's story of her fourth birth is followed by that of her husband, novelist Bill Gaston.
It is natural that the editors would have asked writer friends to contribute (and even that writers would be friends with other writers of about the same vintage), but for readers, it may be best not to know.
All of that said, while Great Expectations didn't fulfil all one's expectations, it is still a good and earnest addition to the growing store of Canadian writing on pregnancy and mothering.
(You're just the cutest little anthology of birth stories! Yes you are!)
(from my review which appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press January 4, 2009.)
July 24, 2014
Touching stories that brought me back to the night I delivered my baby girl at 4:45am. Childbirth and pregnancy from various perspectives and cultures,including a father's view of the whole experience, which was interesting. A beautiful book that brought me back to one of the sweetest moments in my life.
Currently reading
January 22, 2009Loving this, especially when G reads out loud to me, the stories written by dads.
September 5, 2010
This book gives the nitty gritty story of birth. Provides the color commentary that is missing from "What to expect when your expecting"
September 11, 2011
Eh...this was okay. Like any anthology dome stories were better than others. I've read better collections of birth stories though.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews