An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

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An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 · rating details · 2,441 ratings · 599 reviews

"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel...more

Hardcover, 186 pages

Published September 10th 2008 by Little, Brown and Company

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Jan 06, 2013 Marcie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

It's so hard to find the right words to describe this beautifully written poignant book. It sat on my to-read list for about a year and I put off reading it in large part because I became pregnant with my first child shortly after adding it to my list. (I didn't want to freak myself out) Then, when I lost my baby 4 days before his due date, it became an urgency to get my hands on it as if I could somehow procure the answers to my own situation by simply reading a book. I checked it out from a li...more

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Sep 25, 2008 Leslie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: one-sitting-reads, dey-house

I can't remember the last time I cried at a book (and I mean real tears, not just a sentimental tingle in the back of my nose -- maybe "The Diary of Anne Frank" in junior high? "Where the Red Fern Grows"?)

Why this one? Now? (My sister just called and said, "Jesus, is everything okay?" All I could burble was: "Pudding.")

Perhaps it's because I've crossed paths with Elizabeth and Edward, and can see them both so clearly in mind, smoking on the porch of the Dey House. Perhaps it's because I love the...more

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Sep 26, 2008 Edan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read the excerpt of this in Oprah Magazine and it moved me more than anything I've read in a long, long time.

***

Okay, so yesterday when I was sick with a weird, spacey cold, I lay in bed and read this book. It's beautiful, and incredibly sad, and what happened to Elizabeth and Edward is terrible. This book is so honest...

I'm having a hard time writing this review, perhaps because the events in the book, both the awful and wonderful ones, feel too big to summarize or comment on.

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Dec 22, 2008 Christy rated it 5 of 5 stars

A thin, beautiful, sad - but defiant - book about the loss of a baby. It begins with the flat warning: "Someone dies in this book. A baby." McCracken married her British husband in her late thirties and was thrilled to be living together in Bordeaux and pregnant with their first child (nicknamed Pudding.) Amidst the knocking on wood, the name games, and the well-wishes of friends and strangers, something goes very wrong and Pudding dies before birth. The book is written with a son finally born o...more

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Jan 11, 2009 Nicole rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sitting here I'm finding it very difficult to review this book. The subject (the death and mourning of a stillborn baby) was obviously a tough one to get through, but I did find it very interesting. I found myself having such a connection with her experiences - not with exactly what she went through but even just in pregnancy and the expectations of having a baby alone. This book also gave me such insight on how a person in this situation (or others who have lost loved ones) feels and that how y...more

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Apr 10, 2009 Beverly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book on a recommendation of a friend who is familiar with the fact that I have gone through a similar experience in my own life. I, too, have delivered a stillborn son. What is ironic is that I had ordered this book off of Amazon, and it was delivered (and I started reading it) the day before the anniversary of my son's birth/death. I think the author did a wonderful job of putting her grief into words. I related to so many things that she said, felt, and did. My heart was breaking f...more

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Apr 04, 2009 Arryn rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was a heartbreaking memoir about loss and life. There are no surprises here--McCracken tells you right up front that "a child dies in this book: a baby. A baby is stillborn," and then adds that a healthy baby is born in this book, too. I was riveted by the story, told in bits and pieces, moving backward and forward fairly fluidly, leaving holes that weren't filled until the end. The writing is stark and honest, yet poetic in its simplicity. It reminded me in so many ways of Joan Didion...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Gila rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This book touched me profoundly. The subject matter may not be for everyone- a stillborn son, sadness, strength, fear, and hope. It eloquently put to words the indescribable experience of grieving someone who you never actually met- but someone who you KNEW with every cell of you body. This book is quite painful at times but also realistic, beautiful, and funny. As McCracken says, "grief lasts longer than sympathy" and as time passes, others feel that you should "get over it" though this is not...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Shelah rated it 5 of 5 stars

In An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Elizabeth McCracken writes, sometimes in excruciating detail, about her experience giving birth to her first child, who was stillborn. It's both a hard book to read and a hard book to put down, and much more gripping than McCracken's fiction. It's not a book I'd give to a grieving mother who has just gone through the same experience, but maybe one I'd give to someone a few months later. She writes beautifully about the pregnancy, the birth, the...more

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Dec 30, 2008 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

A hard book to comment on, but I will say that I read it in one night/morning, as I suspect most people do who pick it up. Also: I would like to take all my lessons in how to handle maternal grief and anxiety (when/if I experience it) from a three-headed oracle of Rachel Zucker, Joan Didion, and Elizabeth McCracken. The three of them should replace Hallmark permanently.

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Jan 20, 2009 Missmmking rated it 2 of 5 stars

Grim & painful retelling of a still birth experienced by a couple of contemp. authors (American and British) while living in France.
I started w/ out knowing anything about it as I liked the title. Finished it in a day. Odd that they named the unborn child Pudding and even craved that onto it's grave stone. I felt as though I was reading a "Writer's" diary. It only made me think of those sadder losses - parents' loss of their children that they have had a real, living relationship with.

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Nov 11, 2008 Esme Pie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

Hard to take the story of a still born child and make it anything but a devestating read. But somehow Elizabeth McCracken is able to do this. I actually laughed out loud several times. This reminded me a lot of 'The Year of Magical Thinking.' McCracken is a cool customer too. I thought it was very interesting. It's a memoir of a child who never existed except as a hope and as a thought for the future. How do you mourn that AND continue to go forward into a future you no longer trust. Very intere...more

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Feb 17, 2011 Katherine rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an amazing book about loss, and a funny one at that (I heard an interview w/McCracken rebroadcast on NPR, locate that as you read the book). Rush out and buy/borrow a copy as it will make you think about life, the universe and everything.

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Jan 30, 2011 Jenn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Heartbreaking yet hopeful little memoir about a stillborn baby.

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Nov 20, 2008 Kyla rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you are one of those people who say "I'd read it but the subject matter is so DEPRESSING" well then move on, dear reader, I do not suffer your disease. Sometimes I worry that I find material on mourning and grief and loss so compelling. but this is the rawest of raw materials and it is usually authentic and that is what I appreciate.
This book has the added bonus of being beautifully, impeccably, stark.

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Jan 10, 2009 Elevate Difference rated it 4 of 5 stars

In a time when many readers are wary of memoirs, Elizabeth McCracken's effort is at once refreshing, harrowing, brave and emotionally exhausting. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination addresses every parent-to-be's worst fear: losing a baby. This is one of the most honest and courageous books I've read in years. Without sentiment or hyperbole, McCracken describes the journey in one crystal clear sentence: "This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending."

McCracken doesn...more In a time when many readers are wary of memoirs, Elizabeth McCracken's effort is at once refreshing, harrowing, brave and emotionally exhausting. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination addresses every parent-to-be's worst fear: losing a baby. This is one of the most honest and courageous books I've read in years. Without sentiment or hyperbole, McCracken describes the journey in one crystal clear sentence: "This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending."

McCracken doesn't scream the pain of her loss like most of us would. No, it's with an almost eerie calm and immaculate recounting of small, true-to-life details that she meticulously unfolds the story of losing her son in the ninth month of her pregnancy. It's within this super-human restraint that her words accumulate and retain the power of nature itself. Once the dust settles, we are left breathless. McCracken doesn't have a problem showing the emotions that come with such a loss, like anger at the mundane events that demand attention.

"It seemed too much to bear. How could we be expected to buy packing tape when our child had died? To pack in eighteen hours what we'd thought we had three days to do? To stay up all night sealing up cartons for someone else's mistake? I was furious, insane at the injustice of having to deal with anything even mildly difficult in the face of the hardest thing in the world. When, I asked Edward, as we drove to buy more tape, did we become characters in a Raymond Carver story?"

In this rich, clear voice, McCracken describes going to the funeral home to collect her baby’s ashes. In these recurring situations, the retroactive clarity McCracken possesses as an author allows us to step back from her sadness and concentrate on the irony of the setting within the context of a comparatively mundane existence. This skill helps us see that all situations have their oddities and in this strangeness, McCracken is able to find her sanity, her ability to make through.

In the book, McCracken tells the us about the first memoir, the one she began to write after she knew the baby was a boy. She describes how she flaunted fate and bought baby clothes, boxes of them, and how she refused to give the baby a name just in case it attracted bad luck. So, the baby in her womb was called "pudding" by both McCracken and her husband.

One can only feel grateful that McCracken has shared these naked emotions with us. Her openness and clarity will undoubtedly be of great value to those of us who find ourselves in or in fear of a similar situation. This memoir is paramount in taking the first step in answering the question: "What next?"

Review by Ann Hite(less)

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Dec 22, 2012 Anakalia84 rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have never felt so awful as a human being as when I sat reading An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination knowing I’d be ‘reviewing’ it for a blog shortly after I finished. How do you justify that in your mind? ‘Reviewing’ something so personal, so devastating, so beautiful, so intense. As an avid reader, a constant reviewer, and one those people who presume to call themselves a writer though I’ve yet to have anything published, I felt like an inconsiderate intruder reading such an intim...more I have never felt so awful as a human being as when I sat reading An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination knowing I’d be ‘reviewing’ it for a blog shortly after I finished. How do you justify that in your mind? ‘Reviewing’ something so personal, so devastating, so beautiful, so intense. As an avid reader, a constant reviewer, and one those people who presume to call themselves a writer though I’ve yet to have anything published, I felt like an inconsiderate intruder reading such an intimate account of a loss so great. It’s rare to read something so personal.

As a mother, on the other hand, I wept. I wept, and wept, and wept, for little Pudding. I wept for Elizabeth. I wept for a friend who lost a baby not long after I had my own. I wept for all the things I may have said wrong, all the things I may have not said, and I wept for the selfish joy that my own sweet, precious child was snuggled next to me as I read. I wept for Pudding, I wept for another friend who died, I wept for his mother because even though she had 29 years with him he was still her child, and I wept for the baby cemetery that I pass every time I visit his grave.

I’ve had a writer’s crush on Elizabeth McCracken for sometime. I have an extremely vivid memory of reading A Giant’s House while having lunch with the same friend whose grave I now visit. We devoured deli food, iced tea, and discussed the oddity of a romance between a librarian and child giant. I remember telling him what a strange tale it was, but if I could ever manage to write anything half so interesting I would pee myself with happiness. He promised to read it to, though I’m quite certain he never did because he was in the habit of reading the first thirty or so pages of something and then proclaiming himself an expert on a topic, starting novels and not finishing them, and making half-hearted promises… little things that I tend to hate in people, but for whatever reason found endearing in him. I loved him dearly, and for that reason, I’ve never been quite certain whether my Elizabeth McCracken crush was because Elizabeth McCracken was all that amazing, or if it was because thinking of her always reminds me of him. I cannot think of one without thinking of the other.

Reading An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, I’m now quite certain that Elizabeth McCracken is that amazing, and deserves adoration outside the realm of Matty memories. She’s a wonderful writer, a fascinating person, has a rockin’ last name, and by sharing this book with the world has proved to me (without ever having met her) that she has a very giving soul.

Elizabeth McCracken, thank you for sharing Pudding’s story. And from the bottom of my heart: I am sorry for your loss.

For more reviews, go to anakalianwhims.wordpress.com.(less)

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May 03, 2012 Leto2 rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am not a big fan of Elizabeth McCracken's writing style -- it is a bit too flowery and the structure is too random for my tastes. That said, this is a wonderful book and it describes many of the feelings that Cyndi and I have had since we had a stillborn. Many of the feelings which I never could have put into words McCracken was able to describe very well. One example: she says that she wishes she had a card she could just hand to people explaining her situation (that she had a stillborn child...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Nancy Kennedy rated it 5 of 5 stars

This account of the author's experience of giving birth to a stillborn child is tragic; the pain of it takes your breath away. But the author's personality is not erased by the tragedy. Her powers of observation and her wry sense of humor enliven this tale that could otherwise be unbearable to read, as it must have been unbearable for her to experience.

To talk about humor in regards to a stillbirth sounds utterly wrong. Even to Ms. McCracken, a woman's suggestion that she write about "the lighte...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Sueg rated it 4 of 5 stars

I haven't been a very voracious reader lately. I have tried to read about current events, I have tried to read dystopian YA novels, I have tried to read about Queen Elizabeth's ties to piracy, I have tried to read two different cooking-themed mysteries, but I keep putting everything down. Yesterday I picked this up at the library, brought it home and read it in a single past-my-bedtime sitting. I realized as soon as I cracked the cover that Elizabeth McCracken is the author of another book I rea...more

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Jun 09, 2011 Jeruen Dery rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is once again, a book that I read since one of my friends recommended it. And what can I say? It has been a lukewarm book for me.

So what is this about?

This is actually non-fiction. This is the memoir of the author, Elizabeth McCracken, and her experience in delivering a still-born baby. Yes, it is a memoir about a still-born baby. The book talks about her experience, her pregnancy in France, and the whole process of finding out that the baby inside her is dead, and so forth. She grieves, sh...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Megan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was surprised to see AN EXACT REPLICA... compared by a reviewer to THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion: I can't think of two books which approach the same subject matter (the death of a loved one) more differently. Where Didion is most essentially writing about her own death--at least, the end of her family and context and relevance and time--McCracken is talking about trauma, a personal shame. Death is a whole different matter for old people than it is for young people.

Which probably...more I was surprised to see AN EXACT REPLICA... compared by a reviewer to THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion: I can't think of two books which approach the same subject matter (the death of a loved one) more differently. Where Didion is most essentially writing about her own death--at least, the end of her family and context and relevance and time--McCracken is talking about trauma, a personal shame. Death is a whole different matter for old people than it is for young people.

Which probably explains another thing that surprised me about this book: how similar McCracken's ordeal was to what I went through when I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer last year, at age 22. I picked it up in a book store yesterday (and finished it last night at 3 AM) with the same hideous, gossipy impulses that cause anyone who hasn't suffered much lately to be interested in the pain of others. And it is to her credit as a writer that McCracken never lost that part of me--the part that loves a good story.

But three things hit me unexpectedly. First, the jealousy. When she talks about her friends who were pregnant at the same time as she was (who email her pictures of their babies, or say, "How is motherhood? Your son must be one already!") she doesn't say it directly, but you can feel her grief and rage and frustration and yes, jealousy pouring off the pages. She exudes a sick feeling of inadequacy compared to these women, for whom pregnancy was so easy. I had the same feeling when I was diagnosed: your life path seems to diverge--you are no longer like other young women--and while you don't resent other people for living while you are suffering, they become distant from you: you are not someone who can be comforted by statistics (as McCracken says) when you've come down on the wrong side of such amazing odds. I remember, for instance, having dinner in Williamsburg one night when I was going through chemotherapy, and watching a very young woman whine very loudly about how she had left her cigarettes at home. That morning, in my oncologist's office, I'd read that lung cancer is the number one killer worldwide. But it wasn't just the smoking--it was the fearlessness I was jealous of, it was how much she cared about what other people thought of her. She was still a young person. AN EXACT REPLICA... articulates what it means to be a young person inside of a hospital room, inside of a trauma, looking out at healthy people living the happiest moments of their lives.

The second thing is the guilt. The most moving moment in the book is when McCracken finds out her baby has no heartbeat, and she thinks, "people are going to be mad at me." She plays this moment brilliantly, saving it for last--the book is structured so that we start with the aftermath of the loss of the baby, then read about her second pregnancy, and finally, see the moment at which she delivers the first--so that we understand that her desperation and sadness are emotions she holds close to her chest; at that point, we're not strangers she's shrieking her sorrow at in a bloody white Victorian nightgown and matted hair (to borrow her image). It sounds unbelievable if a medical emergency has never happened to you, but self-pity really isn't the first thing that goes through your head. (As McCracken points out, we usually seem to reserve our self-pity for moments when we're crying our eyes out over a man or some silly thing.) It's guilt for what you are putting your family through: the first thing I thought when the doctor told me there were cancer cells in my tumor was, I do not want this for my sister--my sister will not be defined as The Girl Whose Sister Died Young of Cancer. (I could hear it: "Oh, it's so sad, her sister died of cancer ten years ago." I didn't feel comfortable around her until I found out that the cancer wasn't going to kill me.) The other thing you are ashamed of is your basic innate physical inability to do what other women do. That is why you simply cannot speak to certain other women after it happens, in particular, those who were never close enough to you to trust before the trauma occurred.

Which brings me to this: when you have a traumatic event happen to you, some people really do stop talking to you. McCracken writes about the friend who took three months to offer her condolences with a lame excuse for herself--and whose words of grief were correspondingly wooden and cliche. My grandmother asked my mother three times for my address to send some sort of hypothetical greeting card--"Sorry you got cancer?"--I never received one. My sister told my cousin, who had been my absolute best friend in the world as a two year old up until college, and she never emailed or called me. My mother got a phone call from her a full year after my diagnosis--inviting us to her wedding ("I've been kind of an asshole for not calling," she said). It's shocking who doesn't call. But it's also shocking who does. How many friends of friends of friends would do anything to help. Like McCracken, I had no idea how much this communal outpouring would mean to me. And it did. People are almost afraid to touch you when you go through some sort of statistically extraordinary trauma, as if you're contagious and ready to pounce, without realizing that almost anything they say is the right thing to say as long as they say it--and mean it (you can tell, and I can tell, and Elizabeth McCracken can definitely tell).

But you know what? This is not a book about "coping," and hallelujah for that. McCracken says something to the effect of "Fuck closure," and it's true that there is nothing that helps less than pop psychology bullshit terminology, words like "closure" and "the grieving process" and "forgiveness." (True story: I was prescribed acupuncture by my oncologist to help with nerve damage. He said, "I feel some anger around you--do you know anyone around you who might be angry?" Yes, actually, what I am is fucking furious.) AN EXACT REPLICA... is about walking inside the closet of grief and staying there for a long time, and losing yourself in sadness, and then coming back to yourself and knowing you are an entirely new person who will "never be a woman whose first child did not die" or never be a woman without cancer.

My boyfriend lost two grandparents while I was going through chemotherapy, and we were unable to attend one of the funerals. The thing I found him always having to explain is that these people who die as grandparents have long, happy lives behind them. So while sad, their deaths are also understandable. There is a fairness, a natural order to this that human beings have spent centuries collectively making sense of. The death of a child, the death of a young woman--there isn't any sense. Even an autopsy of McCracken's child is inconclusive, so his death will always be a mystery, and at that moment you, the reader, think, my GOD, what else can this poor woman go through? (One of the hardest things for me was that my cancer is not caused by genetics or the environment. "So what the hell IS it caused by?!" I asked my doctor. "We don't know.") Of course, doctors are never very good at saying "We don't know," which is why McCracken's midwife starts trying to place the blame on her only hours after the baby is born dead ("Elizabeth, are you sure you were careful about what you ate?" she asks, as McCracken is recovering from laboring and delivering a dead child).

McCracken knows her memoir is also a love letter, but she wonders if she is writing a love letter to Pudding (the stillborn child), to her husband Edward, or to her living children (Gus, born only a year later, and Matilda). I think it is a love letter to other young women going through what she has gone through. She writes of recognizing other women who gave birth to stillborn children as part of a new family tree. And she struggles to remind herself that you never know what someone else is going through (the most important thing I learned from getting cancer--you truly never know). This is a book that had to be written, for the growing number of young women going through cancer--because no, it is NOTHING like your grandmother dying of cancer at 87--and for mothers going through the loss of a young child. (less)

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May 29, 2009 Mitzi rated it 4 of 5 stars

McCracken re-lives her pregnancy and stillborn birth of her first child and the pregnancy and birth of her second. It is elegantly and beautifully written, even if the subject matter is heartbreaking at times. It is an amazingly self-aware memoir--she describes her feelings as best as she can remember, trying not to color her memories with hindsight; and then she tries to explain why she felt that way. I always find people who write memoirs brave, for while they document their struggles and live...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Elizabeth McCracken wrote my favorite line in all of adult fiction: "I do not love mankind."

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination wasn't fictional, though. It was the true account of something tragic that happened to her and her husband, Edward. One thing I really admired about this book was McCracken's vulnerabilitly and willingness to share something that's impossible for anyone who hasn't experienced the same loss to truly understand. I also liked the conversations she had in her h...more

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Jun 07, 2011 Dragondreamer rated it 4 of 5 stars

My feelings about this book are quite complicate. While I have never gone through a stillbirth/late term loss, I have lost many pregnancies myself and have been through a stillbirth with a dear friend. McCracken is an extremely talented writer and it makes this book about a tough subject quite easy to read. She also explains the complexities of the feelings that surround a loss in a way that anyone can understand. She also manages to inject a fair amount of humor into a generally humorless subje...more

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Jan 06, 2011 King rated it 5 of 5 stars

Last semester, I took a group dynamics class. You basically sit around in a circle and the professor asks you to share stuff about yourself. It was a fun class, some days less than others. We had two students there who had endured complications in pregnancy, resulting in the loss of possibilities. When they shared this with the class, I didn't really know how to feel. But that is not quite right. All of us have an idea of what to feel, as the empathy modules in our brains activate. To be more pr...more Last semester, I took a group dynamics class. You basically sit around in a circle and the professor asks you to share stuff about yourself. It was a fun class, some days less than others. We had two students there who had endured complications in pregnancy, resulting in the loss of possibilities. When they shared this with the class, I didn't really know how to feel. But that is not quite right. All of us have an idea of what to feel, as the empathy modules in our brains activate. To be more precise, I knew what to feel but didn't feel it. One of the two females commented "No one really understands." And perhaps that is why I was unfeeling. I think this book has helped me with that part and in doing so, I feel like I will know how to feel when next presented with such a "calamity," as the author puts it. It's not such a nebulous concept anymore.

I did find it interesting that discomfort was a common reaction. I guess the gravity of such things just shuts down our mental process and renders us mute. Like McCracken says, it is like the only two options we give ourselves is to say something incredibly sagaciously comforting or something incredibly idiotic. Fear of the latter takes over. But I learned, echoing Da Vinci's sentiments on simplicity ("...is the ultimate sophistication."), a terse "I am sorry," is sufficient. Some words are better than no words, because tragedy is not something to be avoided like a leper with the ebola virus. Words link us with others, and when we offer them to others, we tell them that they are not alone.

The memoir, is happy and sad. The whole spectrum of emotions are encountered. Laughter, tears, anger, peace, longing, etc. It brings the stirring scene of Steel Magnolia where Sally Field's character goes through the grieving process to mind. It also reminded me of Rabbit Hole, Next To Normal and The Lovely Bones. But it is better than those, because this is real. It is good grief. Scratch that. It is beautiful grief. It's the kind of happy sad cocktail that makes you embrace life in all it happy and sad craziness. (less)

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Jan 25, 2011 Charles rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am not a curmudgeon. I have several living children. As a man, anatomical constraints have established that none has been carried in my womb or delivered through my loins. I have never lost a child; I hope that I never do.

That being stated, writing about a devastatingly sad subject in a lyrical, emotionally honest, heartfelt, warm, sad, funny manner may make a great subject, and may elicit sympathy and empathy (those not being bad things at all), but does not necessarily make a great book. I a...more

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Jan 08, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: in-my-library-someday

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I read this book when it was recommended by an author on NPR for their "You Must Read This" segment. It's a memoir by a woman whose first child was stillborn, and the reviewer described it as both funny and tragic. She said she finally decided to read it when a co-worker laughed out loud while reading a book and when the reviewer asked about it, it turned out to be this one. I have to say I didn't do any laughing out loud when I read it, but then again, I rarely do anyway. I read it because my f...more I read this book when it was recommended by an author on NPR for their "You Must Read This" segment. It's a memoir by a woman whose first child was stillborn, and the reviewer described it as both funny and tragic. She said she finally decided to read it when a co-worker laughed out loud while reading a book and when the reviewer asked about it, it turned out to be this one. I have to say I didn't do any laughing out loud when I read it, but then again, I rarely do anyway. I read it because my first child, also a son, was stillborn and I was interested to read someone else's account. There was a lot I could relate to. I'll share some passages that resonated with me:

"After the baby died, I told Edward over and over again that I didn't want to forget any of it; the happiness was real, as real as the baby himself, and it would be terrible, unforgivable, to forget it. His entire life had turned out to be the forty-one weeks and one day of his gestation, and those days were happy. We couldn't pretend that they weren't. It would be like pretending that he himself was a bad thing, something to be regretted, and I didn't. I would have done the whole thing over again even knowing how it would end."

"'Oh Elizabeth,' my friend Lib wrote, 'these past ten months did happen, Pudding did happen, we won't forget him. He's part of our family, one of those cousins or great-aunts that not everyone has met but is still part of the whole damn sweet sad picture.'"

Our experiences were in many ways similar; we both took good care of ourselves, and sometimes felt smugly superior in our prenatal habits, never anticipating a negative outcome. (She writes of a friend in France who became pregnant while Elizabeth was pregnant with Pudding, who continued to smoke and drink throughout her pregnancy but who later delivered a healthy baby.) Hers was her first, and a son, as was mine. She wanted a minimal-intervention pregnancy and birth. She didn't worry much during her first pregnancy. I could also relate to the aftermath, to the never being sure of anything, to the future being an "if" not a "when". She wrote it from the other side of her second pregnancy, with a healthy baby son. I'm not there yet, being only 17 weeks into my second try at a happy ending.

I can't tell you everything that was true for me in this book because so much of it was. I hope that someday I can write an account of my own experience in a way that would make it something others would want to read. In the meantime, if you want to read a moving, honest account of an experience such as ours I recommend that you pick it up. Don't be afraid of the subject matter. It has a happy ending. I'll even end this review with her words:

"It's a happy life, but someone is missing. It's a happy life, and someone is missing. It's a happy life--"
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Mar 12, 2011 Deanna Roy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: miscarriage-related

When I first picked this book up in 2008, I put it down again within a few pages. I was upset.

I too had lost a baby, three, in fact, and when McCracken called my wish for pictures a "fetish" and seemed to suggest I was wrong or strange for wanting footprints and memory boxes and any sort of artifact, I just couldn't read on.

But here, three years later, a new friend suggested I try it again. I'm glad I did, as once I was past that hurt, I could see McCracken had written a clear-eyed memoir, used...more

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Jan 30, 2010 kaity rated it 5 of 5 stars

I just read this book in one sitting.

I'm feeling like I have just been through a horrific ordeal, completely out of sympathy. I hadn't read Elizabeth McCracken before but I developed real affection for her, through moments of dark humor and profound tenderness alike. I share much of her superstitiousness and caution, having always felt both mystified and a bit creeped out by people who name their future children in the fourth week of pregnancy and go public with the news so early on. It's just s...more

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About Elizabeth McCracken

Elizabeth McCracken (born 1966) is an American author. She is married to the novelist Edward Carey, with whom she has two children - August George Carey Harvey and Matilda Libby Mary Harvey. An earlier child died before birth, an experience which formed the basis for McCracken's memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.

McCracken, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was born in...more

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“I didn't know what it was I was feeling. Then I realized it was seeing someone and knowing immediately that you love him.” — 6 people liked it

“As for me, I believe that if there's a God - and I am as neutral on the subject as is possible - then the most basic proof of His existence is black humor. What else explains it, that odd, reliable comfort that billows up at the worst moments, like a beautiful sunset woven out of the smoke over a bombed city.” — 5 people liked it

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