A LIE SOMEBODY TOLD US ABOUT YOU- Abortion's Impact on an Intact Couple

"Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself," according to Anais Nin.   Peter Ho Davies appropriate this quote for the title to his sensitive novel which uncovers the aftermath of an abortion on a married couple.  Peter Ho Davies' tender and stirring novel is narrated in third-person from the vantage of the father.  A young couple are counseled on the pre-natal exams of their fetus, determined as female.  A possible genetic disordered laden this couple whether to terminate the pregnancy.  Deciding to terminate, the regret, guilt and contemplation following the birth of their son afterwards drive the father's feeling towards his wife, son and himself.  The overriding emotion is one of guilt for the daughter they didn't have and guilt towards the fierce love felt for the son they have. "He is the child of abortion and the end of regret.  We had an abortion and then we had a child.  But also:  we had a child and then we had an abortion.  The koan of their lives."  Life is messy and complicated.  The couple are advised by several teachers they should have their son tested for autism.  Testing is something viewed with anathema and is deferred although both parents observe their son's social awkwardness and physical delays.  The resentment towards the son's coordinated classmates who rush pass and ignore him feel lethal to the father.  He choses to volunteer at a health clinic that provides abortions. He stops working there because the animosity felt towards protestors at the clinic was as a murderous rage.   "He realizes with a dull pang, the antis, who are the only ones who can absolve him, forgive him.  Because they believe he's a sinner, and secretly he agrees.  That's why he hates them really-because they won't."  This perceptive novel doesn't defend or argue for abortion rights.  It opens our hearts and minds to the powerful feelings following the procedure which is not made lightly.   The author's aim is not to clarify political or emotional reasoning, rather, to have the space to regard his feelings.  "Later he will understand that all these feelings-his, his wife's-just won't fit between the lines, between the sides. In the political box.  He doesn't want to argue about those feelings to defend them or justify them, he just wants to be left alone to feel them."   His wife tells him, "It's not really regret, you know.  It's grief."  I highly recommend this absorbing and intelligent novel.