Thursday, January 20, 2011

Expecting Adam by Martha Beck

I didn't expect this to be a "page-turner," but it kept me turning pages long after I should have gone to bed last night and hurrying home this afternoon to finish it.

Basically, two young Mormons from the same town in Utah go to Harvard and totally buy into the high-pressure competitive success-driven Harvard attitude - except for falling in love, marrying, and having a child. That isn't what the story is about, though. The story is about how their second child changes everything - even before his birth.

On their way to their PhDs, already "hampered" (in the Harvard view) by marriage itself and a small child, they conceive a second child which threatens everything they have learned to value, but instead of destroying their futures this child remakes their minds, hearts, and lives.

The framework of the story is Martha's pregnancy - as one might expect from the title - but it refuses to be bound by constraints of time and space. It almost seems that time is irrelevant, but it still remains a coherent, if mystical, narrative of a woman who discovers that there are more things in heaven and earth than she ever dreamt of.

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