| LETTER TO A CHILD NEVER BORN Oriana Fallaci New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-671-45162-2 | ||||
| ISBN 0-671-45162-6 | 128p. | hC | $1.25? | |
This gripping tale is undeniably fiction, for it includes dream sequences as well as an imagined dialog with the child ("Child") of the title. Yet, I cannot help but believe that most of the events depicted really happened. And there is nothing very unusual about those events: A young career woman gets pregnant out of wedlock, determines to carry the child to term, but miscarries.
What makes it so memorable is the way Fallaci illuminates the inner life of that young woman — the swings from hope to fear, the loving support for the nascent life conflicting with her drive to maintain her career, which she also loved, the nagging guilt in the end that her pursuit of that career led to the miscarriage, and her responses to the external pressures on her.
Fallaci pulls no punches and provides no easy answers. That, ultimately, is what makes her narrative so compelling.
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