Fiction, Fiction Subjects

The Two Week Wait

Name: The Two Week Wait
Author: Sarah Rayner
ISBN: 9781250021489

by Sarah Rayner

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Overview

A memorable and moving page-turner about two very different women, each yearning to create a family of her own

What if the thing you most longed for was resting on a two week wait? From the author of the international bestselling One Moment, One Morning, comes a moving portrait about what it truly means to be a family. After a health scare, Brighton-based Lou is forced to confront the fact that her time to have a baby is running out. She can't imagine a future without children, but her partner doesn't seem to feel the same way, and she's not sure whether she could go it alone. Meanwhile, in Yorkshire, Cath is longing to start a family with her husband, Rich. No one would be happier to have children than Rich, but Cath is infertile. Could these strangers help one another? With her deft exploration of raw emotions and her celebration of the joy and resilience of friendship, The Two Week Wait is Sarah Rayner at her best.

Synopsis

A memorable and moving page-turner about two very different women, each yearning to create a family of her own

After a health scare, Brighton-based Lou is forced to confront the fact that her time to have a baby is running out. She can't imagine a future without children, but her partner doesn't seem to feel the same way, and she's not sure whether she could go it alone.

Meanwhile, in Yorkshire, Cath is longing to start a family with her husband, Rich. No one would be happier to have children than Rich, but Cath is infertile.

Could these strangers help one another?

With her deft exploration of raw emotions and her celebration of the joy and resilience of friendship, The Two Week Wait is Sarah Rayner at her best.

About the Author, Sarah Rayner

SARAH RAYNER was born in London and now lives in Brighton with her partner. She worked for many years as an advertising copywriter, and now writes fiction full time.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Two women from very different walks of life both desperately want babies, in Rayner’s new novel. There’s Lou, a lesbian whose health scare creates pressure to get pregnant sooner rather than later. And there’s Cath, whose cancer surgery has made her incapable of having children of her own. They cross paths indirectly as Lou donates an egg to an “egg sharing” program in exchange for subsidies for her own in vitro. Cath receives some of Lou’s eggs and the two women embark upon parallel journeys to motherhood: one finds success, while the other does not, and the process almost destroys her until she’s able to abandon her dreams of motherhood and focus instead on other people’s children. Rayner’s delicate, compassionate exploration of the struggles women face with fertility will resonate loud and clear with anyone struggling to have a family. To her credit, Rayner (One Moment, One Morning) resists the easy happy ending. While that may be more painful to read, it’s also more honest. Agent: Vivien Green; Gaia Banks, Sheil Land Associates, U.K. (Dec.)

Kirkus Reviews

Love doesn't always follow the rules. Should creating a child be any different? Rayner (One Moment, One Morning, 2011, etc.) gently disentangles the lives of men and women (including the main characters from her previous novel) brought together by the desire to have a baby. All of these lives converge through the alternative parenting movement. Recovering from ovarian cancer, Cath realizes that she truly wants a child with her devoted husband. For his part, Rich had always dreamed of a family with Cath, a dream that had seemed to fade from view during her illness. But without ovaries, and rejecting adoption, they will need another generous woman to donate eggs. Once that hurdle is past, they'll need to deal with Cath's judgmental mother and sister-in-law, who wields alternative medical advice like a weapon. Lou, recovering from her own brush with a cancer scare, faces a different obstacle. Her partner, Sofia, has no interest in settling down. Furthermore, her mother--who seems stuck in the 1950s, devoutly ignoring her daughter's lesbianism--and sister have never considered Lou mother material. Finding the courage to face family bullying proves more difficult than getting pregnant. Once connected through the network of alternative parenting sites, both Cath and Lou do become pregnant--Cath, through the generosity of Lou, who shares her eggs, and Lou, through the lucky arrival of Adam on the scene. A gay doctor who wishes to be a real dad, not just a sperm donor, Adam meets Lou through a mutual friend, and the two negotiate a truly alternative and kind plan for parenting their child. Despite filling her story with so much heartbreak and conflict, Rayner deftly avoids sounding clichéd. Her characters ring true, their concerns are realistic and their emotions guileless. Ripe for filming, this novel is both poignant and authentic.