Loved and Wanted

This is an incredible, painful, beautiful book about mothering and womanhood and navigating a patriarchal world with a female body. 


I keep thinking about where Parravani writes of not addressing certain aspects of her relationship to spare her children's feelings and her concern about what her children, and especially her son, will think when they are old enough to read it. It is unusual to see these concerns addressed in a text in such a vulnerable way, without one shred of defensiveness. I hope they admire their mother for her courage.. 

It seems women can't fully inhabit their own lives once they become mothers. The pram in the hall is the enemy not of productivity but openness because something always has to be held back. I found this book all the more important because of this.

Date reviewed: October 1, 2020

When life for the entire universe and planet turns on its end and like everyone else you "have nothing to do" while your place of work is closed and you are continuing to be in #COVID19 #socialisolation as the second wave is upon us,  superspeed readers like me can read 300+ pages/hour, so yes, I have read the book … and many more today.

I requested and received a temporary digital Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley, the publisher and the author in exchange for an honest review.  

From the publisher, as I do not repeat the contents or story of books in reviews, I let them do it as they do it better than I do 😸.

"Haunting, wild, and quiet at once. A shimmering look at motherhood, in all gothic pain and glory. I could not stop reading' Lisa Taddeo, bestselling author of Three Women

A powerful account of one woman's reckoning with life, death and choice in Trump's America. For readers of Educated and Hillbilly Elegy.

'I want to see a doctor as soon as possible. For an abortion, please.' I was raw and scared.

The line went quiet for a moment. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' the receptionist said dryly. Then more forcefully. 'We don't do things like that here.'

In 2017 Christa Parravani had recently moved her family from California to West Virginia and was surviving on a teacher's salary and raising two young children with her husband, screenwriter Anthony Swofford.

Another pregnancy, a year after giving birth to her second child, came as a shock. Christa had a history of ectopic pregnancies and worried that she wouldn't be able to find adequate medical care. She immediately requested a termination, but her doctor refused to help. The only doctor who would perform an abortion made it clear that this would be illicit, not condoned by her colleagues or their community.

Christa Parravani has crafted, through her own harrowing experiences with healthcare in contemporary America, a brilliant and moving exploration of the impossible choices women face.

What a SEARING| BOOK ... with Trump's nomination of an anti-woman's-right-to-choose justice, abortion, in general, will be a hot topic for months if not years (ditto LGBTQIA rights as she hates them, too!). This was an incredible book that I have now told my book club that we HAVE TO READ in November - the story could be one of any of us. Adequate medical care is a problem in Canada and the US ..and of course, it occurs world wide - why else would there be Doctors-without-borders and Project Smile?  

Abortion is a  hot topic, for sure, but this book shows a woman's valid opinions and needs - you may hate abortion but be pro women's rights: take this to your book club and be ready for a lively discussion of an incredibly well-written book.

(I loved it so much I went and bought her previous book about the loss of her identical twin sister!!)

Loved and Wanted deals with motherhood and pregnancy against the backdrop of US state-by-state restrictions that limit women's reproductive rights which have worsened during Trump's tenure as President. This novel is a memoir of the time the author found herself with an un-planned pregnancy, two young children, money worries and a less than supportive husband. The judgmental and unhelpful comments of the medical professionals involved is staggering and the way in which Women are simply brushed aside and essentially just told to get on with it is a damning indictment of a monetised medical system. Indeed, it is shocking to discover that Medicaid does not cover termination of a pregnancy leaving women to find thousands of dollars to fund one themselves, that is if they can even find a medical professional who will perform it.  The authors writing style took a while to get used to -  she uses short, choppy sentences - but overall an interesting insight into what it is like to be a woman in the US.