Book of the Week: Baby Proof

I hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating the New Year!  Our weekend away was just what the doctor ordered (not literally, but you know what I mean...)  I even managed to squeeze in my reading - I've been pretty good at keeping up my at-least-one-book-a-week rate.  And while I'm no reviewer I thought it would be nice to share one of the books I've read every week here.

I read Emily Giffin’s debut novel, Something Borrowed, its sequel, Something Blue, and Love The One You're With, awhile back and enjoyed them. (Apparently Hilary Swank's production company has purchased the rights to the first two books). Somehow I didn’t think to read Baby Proof until recently. This book is similar to the others in style, but I enjoyed that it tackled something not often touched in chick lit – children and the women who don't want them.
 

I think there is still something very taboo about a woman who is absolutely sure she doesn’t want children.  I can imagine that for such a woman finding a mate, and constantly having the need to justify their lifestyle, can be both tiresome and frustrating. This is where Giffin’s heroine, Claudia Parr, finds herself at the beginning of the novel. Intelligent and successful Claudia is also dead certain she doesn’t want to be a mother. When she meets Ben and they hit it off right away she counts herself lucky. When Ben announces on their first date he doesn’t want children either Claudia knows she’s met her match.

Unfortunately for Claudia, a few years into their seemingly perfect marriage Ben decides he does want children after all, and that's when everything falls apart.  Baby Proof is about all that follows this fateful turn of events.  I enjoyed this novel, the only thing that didn’t ring true to me was how quickly both Claudia and Ben gave up on their love. As in life there are no easy answers in this book—like who is to blame for the break up, if anyone—but it would have been nice for Claudia and Ben to search a bit more for some solutions before giving up on what was, by all accounts, a happy marriage.



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