The Choices We Make

October 3, 2016
Brown’s second novel (after Come Away With Me) explores the potential complexities of friendship, motherhood, and gestational surrogacy through the lens of an unusual ethical quandary. Hannah has always wanted to be a mother, but after years of trying every procedure possible, she and her husband, Ben, have had no success. Hannah’s best friend, Kate, who’s spent years serving as a sounding board for Hannah’s woes while raising her own family, eventually offers to serve as a surrogate for Hannah and Ben. Despite initial reservations from Kate’s husband, David, everyone’s thrilled when she successfully becomes pregnant with a baby boy, and Hannah and Ben excitedly begin preparing for his arrival. Then tragedy strikes
, and Ben and Hannah find themselves pitted against David as they balance fear and grief against a morass of ethical and medical controversies. Brown captures the pathos of infertility and Hannah’s impossible situation, but all four central characters are fairly unmemorable. The resolution may bring about a few sniffles, but stronger characterization and better dialogue would have wrung more from the promising premise.

May 15, 2016
In a novel exploring the fragile ties of friendship, love, and family, Brown (Come Away With Me, 2015) takes on the loaded subject of surrogate motherhood between a pair of best friends--and the unforeseen turmoil and tragedy that result. Hannah and Kate have been linked at the hip since fifth grade, and they possess the sort of easy intimacy--a constant daily connection--that some only find with family members or spouses and some find, well, never at all. Both in their mid-30s and happily ensconced in Bay Area homes with sweet, doting husbands, just one thing mars their otherwise idyllic-seeming friendship: the fact that Hannah and her husband, Ben, have been frantically trying to conceive for years, while Kate and husband David are already parents to two young daughters. Hannah wants to become a mother so badly, the subject of other people's babies can transform her into a seething pit of envy and pain. After a fresh round of fertility tests in which her doctor essentially tells Hannah to start looking into other options, she's understandably shattered. She has an off-putting aversion to adoption, which Brown doesn't really bother to explain, so Hannah immediately begins mulling over hiring a surrogate. When Kate steps up to the plate instead, offering not only to carry the baby, but her own eggs as well, Hannah and Ben find little reason to say no, and they excitedly begin the process. Kate quickly gets pregnant using Ben's sperm (it's a boy!), and everything moves along promisingly--until a series of dramatic health crises befall Kate, threatening to derail, well, everything. Lawyers become involved, as do protesters, and the four friends' bonds are tested to a degree no one would wish on a distant enemy. A compelling premise with a plot that intensifies satisfyingly in the second half, this book is a good bet for readers who don't shy away from difficult moral questions swirling around a sometimes-sappy center.

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May 1, 2016
Hannah and Kate have been best friends since fifth grade. Over the years, their friendship deepens, enveloping Hannah's husband, Ben, and Kate's husband, David, and David and Kate's two daughters. So Kate feels Hannah's pain when she is unable to bear a child. After years of tryingincluding three miscarriages and repeated IVF failuresHannah is ashamed of her body and looking at other options, including surrogacy. Then, despite initial opposition from both David and Hannah, Kate offers to be the surrogate to carry Hannah and Ben's baby. Kate is in her mid-30s, healthy except for occasional migraines, with two successful pregnancies behind her. What could go wrong? But, as is clear in the opening pages, something does go terribly wrong, threatening close bonds and involving medical experts and lawyers. Brown doesn't sugarcoat loss here, any more than she did in her deeply moving debut, Come Away with Me (2015). However, she draws on her own experienceshe herself became a mother through surrogacyas she crafts an involving story suffused with emotion but grounded in reality. Have tissues at hand for this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)