Category — Book Club

Interview with Lolly Winston below this post. Occasional author participation is one of the cool things about the Barren Bitches…

It’s back and better than ever with a brand-new icon. The Barren Bitches (and Man-Pie) Book Brigade has started spinning; meaning, we’re now going to switch off between books that contain IF/adoption/pg loss and books that are a complete distraction–from chicklit to mysteries to good old-fashioned literature.

Here is the master list for the eighth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade. What is the Barren Bitches Book Brigade? It’s a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way. We read both fiction and non-fiction.

Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Start Date: October 31
Question Due: December 6
Question List Sent Out: December 7
Post Dates: December 10-12th (perhaps also the 13th)
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below on December 10th to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Handmaid’s Tale. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on December 6th. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Mel)
The Annex (Josh)
Twisted Ovaries (Vanessa/Helen)
Sticky Bean (Kristen)
Road Blocks and Rollercoasters (R & R)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
Conceiving is Believing (Conceiving is Believing)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
The Open Door (Deanna)
The Dunn Family (Erica)
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
We Are What We Repeatedly Do (Yodasmistress)
Mommy Someday? (Michelle)
That Was the Plan (Ms. Planner)
Our Box of Rain (K)
Clumsy Kisses (Rebecca)
Wonderful Thing (Anne)
Our Own Creation (AMS)
Desperate to Multiply (Portia P)
Slaying, Blogging, Whatever… (Delenn)
I Won’t Fear Love (Julia)
No Swimmers in the Tubes (Noswimmers)
Infertile Fantasies (Bea)
My Journey to Motherhood (Courtney)
Tired of Waiting (Holly)
The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
One Year (Amanda)
Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
Wannabe RE (Rachel)
Infertility Sucks (S)
Confessions of a Paranoid Parent (Paranoid)
Egg Drop Post (Egg Drop)
The Road Less Travelled (Loribeth)
The Duchess (Duchess)

Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on December 6th.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating. I need your blog name, blog url, and email address.

(2) read The Handmaid’s Tale by December 6th (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).

(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on December 6th (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.

(5) on December 7th, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry. You will find out if you are posting on December 10th, 11th or 12th (you can choose).

(6) on December 10th, people will begin to post their entry. Each day, I will post a list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).

After an early email exchange with Lolly Winston, I used the term “lovely” to describe her to Josh. Hence why I laughed so hard when I got to page 171 and read this paragraph:

“You’re lovely,” Noah whispers, lifting his head to kiss her on the mouth. This kiss is deeper and warmer and saltier. But the word lovely spins in Elinor’s head. Isn’t lovely just short of pretty? Three rungs below beautiful? Grandmothers are lovely. She should just relax and ulp–“

When Noah said it to Elinor, he meant it as the highest compliment, that amalgamation of delightful and enjoyable and beautiful. While I can’t speak to Lolly’s physical beauty via email, I can tell you that she is just as warm and delightful and fun as her writing. She is, in a nutshell, lovely. Which is to say that even emailing with her a few times you realize that she could be a heroine in one of her own stories–kind to the bone and thoughtful and smart.

Lolly excels at writing female characters who are likable, intelligent, and always find the right words at the right time. While they find themselves in unenviable situations–the loss of a husband or infertility–they are the best friends every woman needs to have. The ones who would show up at your doorstep with ice cream and know how to walk that fine line between unconditional support and tough love.

For the seventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade, we read her latest novel, Happiness Sold Separately. Elinor, immobilized by infertility and failed treatments, discovers that her husband is having an affair with a personal trainer. Ted loves his wife, but infertility has driven a wedge between them and he doesn’t know how to connect with her anymore. Throw in a 10-year-old boy, an alcoholic ex-lover, your friendly neighbourhood cleaning man, and a tree doctor and you have the colliding of universes and the aftermath of those connections.

Participants in the book tours can ask the author their questions as they read. A very public thank you to Lolly for delving deeper into the world of Elinor and Ted. Here’s what she had to say about her book, writing, and infertility in general:

I was both captivated and unnerved by the character of Ted and wondered how you came up with his story, emotions, behaviors and motivations. How did you research him? Is he based on a single personality or is he an amalgamation of several male personalities and how they might of reacted to personal crisis?

I just wanted to redeem Ted. I wanted him to be lovable, despite being flawed and making big mistakes. The men in my writer’s group made suggestions whenever his thinking or dialogue didn’t ring true to them. Also, I have a friend whose husband is a podiatrist. He’s very funny and warm and smart and I asked him questions about his job for Ted (a podiatrist).

Did you set out to write a novel with infertility as a theme or did it evolve that way? Did you mean to “educate” your mainstream readership in any way through your deft weaving of the pervasiveness of infertility and the lasting impact it has on couples?

I just wanted to write about a couple struggling, and infertility happened to be something that I was familiar with. I do think it was under-covered in the media until the last five years or so, perhaps. I was glad when infertility became more talked about in magazines and on TV shows, because I think my age group was led to believe we could easily have babies in our forties and that’s not statistically the case.

What is/was your personal experience with infertility or pregnancy loss? If you had no personal experience, what tools did you use to craft an accurate portrayal of the effects of infertility on a woman and her marriage?

Like Elinor, I’m unable to have children and did a number of infertility treatments. I started trying to get pregnant on my own at 37. At 38, my OB sent me to the in vitro clinic. I did three IUIs with shots and two IVFs, with no luck. The first IUI worked, but I lost the pregnancy at 12 weeks—after seeing the heartbeat twice. Bah! I think it was probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, after my dad dying when I was in my twenties. Fortunately, my OB ordered a pathology report and we learned that the pregnancy had been a trisomie that never would have made it to term. This is the case with almost all miscarriages. But you don’t know that. I started to drink a little tea once I was nearly in the second trimester, and I honestly thought I’d killed my poor baby with Earl Grey. After the pathology report, I had another test and learned that I have this rare chromosomal anomaly called a “balanced translocation.” The doctors said this diminished my chances even more, but nobody seemed to know by how much. So I eventually called it quits.

I actually went through my own dang medical files to make sure the chronology of events were accurate for the book. I had already done so much research while going through the treatments that I didn’t have to do any more, really. (I’m sure you guys have bought all the books too.) I just had to dip back into that dark personal experience. But I do know about a dozen women for whom in vitro has worked. So I’m very optimistic for others. Sometimes, like anything in life, it can just be a matter of persistence.

Also, I enjoyed the steady pacing of the novel. What is your strategy for maintaining a good pace in your novel?

I think structure helps maintain the pace of a novel. I had a great writing teacher who said that good stories begin when the characters are on the cusp of change. I like to structure things so that they begin with the characters right in the thick of things, with action at the opening. Then of course we need some back story to establish the status quo, and then conflict, with the story moving forward, followed by climax and a resolution, although without a too-tidy bow. This sort of structure is as old as Aristotle. This book was a bit of a challenge for me because I wanted to tell it from multiple points of view, yet not have events overlap, and keep things moving forward. At one point I pages spread across my office floor because the big picture was making my head hurt.

Can you explain the meaning behind the title? I know what it means to me, but I’d like to know what it meant to you.

Happiness Sold Separately is a play on “batteries sold separately.” To me the title just means that love and marriage don’t necessarily guarantee happiness. Couples get married at the end of many stories—such as at the end of Jane Austen’s novels. You imagine that they live happily ever after. But of course we know there are all sorts of sad, difficult events in life that make us unhappy, even after people are married.

I’m assuming you went through treatments yourself—do you think being a writer and having that flexible schedule (not having to go to an office, for example) was helpful when undergoing treatments or did work still get in the way of treatments (okay—or treatments get in the way of work?)?

Working at home when you’re having any sort of health issue is a welcome luxury, I think. It gives you flexibility and you can work in your sweats and lie down for a while if you’re not feeling well. I was doing rounds of in vitro while I was writing my first novel, Good Grief. In vitro was such a d
rag that it made me look forward to my work—the book felt like a refuge. Also, the novel was something I could control, while the outcome of the in vitro, and the roller coaster of news we’d get at the 8 zillion doctor’s appointments, was completely out of my control, and thus driving me crazy. Because I was writing a book with the theme of grief, I think I just poured the grief that goes along with failed treatments and lost pregnancies into the story.

New List Today AND a question at the bottom:

Once again, welcome to the seventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: Happiness Sold Separately
Author: Lolly Winston
Start Date: September 19
Post Dates: October 29th and 30th
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Happiness Sold Separately).

Group B:

That Was The Plan (Ms. Planner)
A Little Sweetness (Meghan)
All Things Deb (Deb)
Waiting for…? (Amy)
Road Blocks and Rollercoasters (R&R)
Where is My Happiness? (Bean)
The Open Door (Deanna)
Fatty Pants (Fattypants)
Outlandish Notions (Sharah)
The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
No Swimmers in the Tubes… (Noswimmers)
Fertilize Me (Farah)
Baby Steps to Baby Shoes (Baby Steps)
Desperate to Multiply (Portia P)

Even if you haven’t read Happiness Sold Separately, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #8 is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Even if you read this book a long time ago, I promise reading it again with a book club will make you see it in an entirely new light.

The Details: Tour #8 will start October 31st (spooky!). Participants will read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. On Tuesday, December 6th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on December 7th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on December 10th–12th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #8, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon and we’ll be voting soon on the book tours for the winter. Happy reading.

NEW BOOK CLUB IDEA:

You know the idea of spinning plates? I’ve been mulling over the idea of spinning books. As I’m putting together the voting list for the next tours, I’m thinking of all these great books that are the opposite of an IF/pg loss book. The ones that give you an escape from everything that is going on. And beyond that, I actually do read books that are not infertility-related (gasp!). Jasper Fforde, chicklit, random Booksense bestsellers. I want to read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, but I don’t want to read it in a vacuum. And I love you guys. And the Barren Bitches Book Brigade rocks. What do you think of a spinning book group? Each tour would become eight weeks long, but the two books would spin at the same time. You could drop in for either one or both. So every four weeks (as opposed to every six weeks), there would be a new tour and it would switch off whether it was an angel (non-IF book) or devil (IF-book) tour. If it gets too crowded, I’ll start a spin-off site where we can discuss/run both tours. Yes? No? Maybe so?

Welcome to the seventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: Happiness Sold Separately
Author: Lolly Winston
Start Date: September 19
Post Dates: October 29th and 30th
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Happiness Sold Separately. We’ve broken down the current tour into two groups. A new list will be posted tomorrow).

Group A:

Stirrup Queens (Mel)–my post is below this one
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
Sticky Bean (Kristen)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
The Dunn Family (Erica)
Candy’s Land (Candy)
Mommy Someday? (Michelle)
Blood Signs (Wordgirl)
Precious Little (Carrie)
Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
Conceiving is Believing (CiB)

Even if you haven’t read Happiness Sold Separately, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #8 is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Even if you read this book a long time ago, I promise reading it again with a book club will make you see it in an entirely new light.

The Details: Tour #8 will start October 31st (spooky!). Participants will read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. On Tuesday, December 6th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on December 7th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on December 10th–12th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #8, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon and we’ll be voting soon on the book tours for the winter. Happy reading.

Intrigued by the idea of a book tour and want to read more about Happiness Sold Separately? Hop along to more stops on the Barren Bitches Book Brigade Tour by visiting the master list in the post above. Want to come along for the next tour? Sign up begins today for tour #8 (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood) and all are welcome to join along (see the post above to sign up). All you need is a book and blog.

Lolly Winston’s books take you right to the edge of your worst fears and allow you to peer down into the valley with a safety rail between you and reality. In Good Grief, Winston explores the months following the death of a spouse. From the grief that hits you in the most unexpected of places–think breakdown in the produce section–to the rebuilding of a life, Winston’s book is raw and hopeful at the same time. Happiness Sold Separately is a wonderful second novel exploring the worst fears associated with infertility–the breakdown of a marriage, the loss of a hard-won pregnancy, the domino effect leading down through grandchildren. She writes the book with an aching beauty that had me nodding my head at times and shouting at the characters at others. The book drew me in and I cared about the characters, and that, for me, is the mark of a good read.

The end of the book was left open to the reader. Do you think that Elinor and Ted stayed together, or that they really finally separate? Did she pursue adoption on her own, or did they do another round of IVF with PGD? Do you think she ended up happy, or did she continue to struggle?

I like that Winston didn’t neatly wrap up the novel with a pat, clear ending. Life is messy–infertility is extremely messy–and I think all the characters bounced through so many conflicting emotions through the text that it would have been a let-down if they had found perfect clarity simply because we were on the last page.

I set down the book choosing to believe that Ted and Elinor stayed together. I think they actually have a lot in common in their grief and one of their problems is that they never share their mutual grief. I’d like to believe that the blow to Ted’s head actually made him wake up and see that he should have shared that dream with Elinor when his heart was ready to explode with excitement over the idea of adoption. Elinor never believes that Ted will be right alongside her on the journey, but I think if she let him be there in the way that he expresses himself (and not as a reflection of her own expression), she would see that he is just as desirous of a family and adoption would be an excellent path to parenthood for them.

Lolly circles back repeatedly to examine the peculiar dynamics of a marriage plagued by infertility. In particular, she focuses on the conflicting desires for closeness and distance that Elinor experiences. Why do you think Elinor “is irritated by her husband when he was attentive, and then resentful when he stepped back to giver her room?” (p. 12). Even during difficult treatment cycles, Ted was not a source of comfort to her (p. 26). Why?

You know how you feel when your back hurts and it makes your entire body hurt and consequently, you can never get comfortable. Your whole body focuses on that pain. It hurts to have other people touch you, you can’t get into a comfortable position, you think rolling onto your side will help, but it only brings more pain.

That’s sort of what infertility is like. The back is the connection for the whole body and the soul is the connection for all emotions. Infertility is like having an inflamed soul.

I think infertility and loss can cause so much pain that there isn’t a comfortable position. And even if pockets of comfort can be found within the panic, it isn’t a permanent fix. It can be suffocating to see your life unfold in a way that you never dreamed possible. We can, within reason, choose our careers. We can’t, at times, choose the role we always thought we would own–parenthood.

As we see glimpses into Ted & Elinor’s relationship after their unsuccessful fertility treatments, we discover that Ted seeks solace in the garage and the gym — places where he can “fix” things. Elinor finds refuge in the laundry room and by re-reading classic novels from college. Why do you think Elinor is drawn to these activities? What activities do you engage in as a way to soothe your soul during your fertility quest and why do you think you are drawn to them? What about your partner – does he/she have places or tasks that provide some refuge?

Bread baking. It started either pre-treatments or at the beginning of treatments. Josh bought me a bread textbook that had bread baking lessons as well as a bread stone for the oven. It was the perfect medium to work through my frustrations. It was warm and soft and smelled good. It wouldn’t be a stretch to play Freud and say that dough became my replacement for a baby. I think Elinor was drawn to laundry for the same reason I was drawn to bread baking. There is a rhythm to it and it feels productive. It is a low stakes accomplishment. If the laundry bleeds, you can usually fix the stains. If the bread doesn’t rise, you can force the dough or start over. It’s low stakes. And it’s on my time. My cycle, the whole idea of trying and waiting and having such a small window of a chance for things to happen, it’s maddening how much of it is tied to time. I can bake bread whenever I wish. I can bake it at night or in the morning. I can churn out 48 bagels and then ignore the oven for the next few weeks. It’s all on my terms.

I was actually thinking about writing a bread post that people could print out and try in their kitchen. A bread baking online tutorial. Yes? No? Would you want to learn how to make bagels?