Great Expectations
Twenty-Four True Stories about Childbirth
edited by Lisa Moore & Dede Crane
Edited by master storyteller Dede Crane and award-winning author Lisa Moore, both of whom contribute their own stories, Great Expectations is a must-have collection for parents and parents-to-be.Uniquely honest and transformative, Great Expectations takes the reader on an emotional and physical journey like no other: Lynn Coady relates the painful memory of her teenage pregnancy and the anguish of having to give up her newborn for adoption; Peter Behrens expresses a father's feeling of utter helplessness and incomparable joy during the birth of his first child; Christy Ann Conlin describes pregnancy at age forty; Afua Cooper reflects upon the immigrant's experience of three pregnancies and childbirths in a new land with evolving customs; Anne Fleming chooses a male donor with her same-sex partner; and Jaclyn Moriarty transcribes her grandmother's and her mother's birth stories, along with her own, to create a tender oral history spanning three generations.
close this panelLisa Moore is the acclaimed author of the novels February, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Alligator, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Fiction Prize (Canada and the Caribbean), and the short-story collections Open, which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, and Degrees of Nakedness. Lisa Moore's books have been translated into many languages and published around the world. She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Dede Crane is the critically acclaimed author of the novel Sympathy, and the the teen novel, The 25 Pains of Kennedy Baines. She is the co-editor of Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories about Childbirth. Her stories have been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and published in numerous literary journals. Dede is a former professional ballet dancer, teacher and choreographer. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her husband, writer Bill Gaston, and their four children.
close this panelAs suits such a multi-faceted subject, this collection is varied in tone, narrative, and authorship...All the writers are award winning authors so the prose is always very good, deftly observant, forming sharp, poignant, comic, succinct dramas...Each story can stand alone as an engrossing read. Together they create a lovely sense of continuum...
Profoundly moving.
Some of Canada's best writers...delve into their experiences of childbirth and bare their souls in sharing their memories...[Great Expectations] demands the best that each writer has to give. These writers deliver.
This collection of essays about childbirth is dedicated to parents of the past, present, and future. No matter which you are, you'll find something to enjoy in these often humorous and dramatic personal stories. The contributors are a who's who of CanLit.
