Flesh & blood Reflections on infertility, family, and creating a bountiful life

"My uterus and I have been at odds for forever," writes essayist Moss (The Subway Stops at Bryant Park) in this powerful account of her decades-long battle with infertility. Moss doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the physical and emotional ramifications of her three miscarriages--the first of which occurred when she was 41--each detailed as a devastating and distinctly gory affair. "I have spent a lot of my life cleaning up after myself in fear and shame," she writes. Her struggle to bring a child to full term was eventually explained when she was diagnosed with a uterine hemangioma, an extremely rare, benign tumor, which led to her decision to have a hysterectomy. When she resolved to write about the surgery online, she was met with an outpouring of similar stories from friends and strangers. "Each person's grief is an ocean wide," she reflects, "forced into a thimble." In poetic language that's by turns blunt and tender, Moss chronicles how she and her husband weathered their sorrow and surfaced from it, dignity still intact, their love "made up of the things we couldn't give to one another, but also full of how hard we tried." This is as an enriching addition to the canon of literature around infertility. (Oct.)

A moving, well-rendered portrait of the seriously ailing artist. Moss starts the first chapter with a definition of the word exsanguinate, chronicling how she was literally bleeding out in her creative writing class. From that bloody beginning, the author delivers an engaging, even charming memoir. At 52, she had known the grief of miscarriage and infertility for a decade, partly alleviated by her husband's excellent suggestion: "Hey, what if we just tried to be happy anyway? I mean we can't make the sadness go away, but maybe we can be happy too, at the same time?" Her alarming bleeding only increased in severity, opening a long season of incapacity, surgery, recovery, relapse, and, finally, healing. Throughout, it feels like Moss is taking our hands and allowing us to accompany her on this journey. Her careful, lovely sentences and good-humored and thoughtful observations seem to be as much a part of her healing as her 84-year-old mother, who came to care for her, her kind, hardworking husband, and the team of doctors she sees so often: "It gets so that I am comfortable having a room full of men bending down between my legs and looking in there like I am a car with my hood up. Get so comfortable in fact that I feel like I could walk around the doctor's office half-naked and not feel self-conscious." Another key figure is the author's late grandmother, whom she only knew for one year when she was 6 years old but whose memory inspires warmth and peace to this day. As in Jackie Polzin's recent novel Brood, to which this book is similar in spirit, the natural world plays an important role, but here, instead of chickens, there is a praying mantis named Claude and several cats, both domestic and feral. A healing balm, this inviting memoir lights a path through grief and illness. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.