Delicate Condition

May 29, 2023
Dreams of motherhood turn to nightmares in this unflinching adult debut from the pseudonymous Valentine (YA author Danielle Vega, the Merciless series). Anna Alcott, 39, is preparing to wind down her moderately successful acting career as she and her husband begin a third, last-ditch round of IVF. Then her latest movie unexpectedly hits big, and Anna finds herself campaigning for an Oscar while juggling a torturous medical regimen. When Anna nearly misses her egg retrieval surgery due to a calendar app typo, she blames her hectic schedule. Then the details of her embryo transfer appointment change even as she’s looking at her calendar, and she begins to fear that someone is stalking her. Anna succeeds in getting pregnant, but after her Brooklyn apartment is broken into while she’s napping, she and her husband decamp to snowy, deserted Southampton, Long Island. Her stalker continues tormenting her, however, leaving messages and voodoo dolls in Anna’s path. As she develops harrowing symptoms including hair loss and hallucinations that her husband and obstetrician dismiss, she fears for both her baby’s safety and her own sanity. The book’s length and madcap denouement diminish the visceral urgency of the first-person narrative, but Valentine successfully mines pregnancy’s horrors for dramatic effect while condemning condescension toward, and ignorance of, women’s struggles with fertility and childbearing. It adds up to a fiercely feminist millennial heir to Rosemary’s Baby. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, ICM Partners.

Starred review from July 1, 2023
People will be asking for this book, which serves as the basis for the new season of the popular TV show American Horror Story. Heralded on social media as "the feminist update to Rosemary's Baby," it tells the story of angst-ridden Brooklyn actress Anna Alcott, who is in her late thirties and desperate to have a baby. After a torturous in-vitro procedure, Anna is overjoyed to see a tenuous pink line on the test strip, but also addled and beset with concerns about the pregnancy. A social media user named ""number1crush"" trolls her mercilessly, and after she senses a strange presence in her bed and realizes the ultrasound photo of her fetus has gone missing, Anna flees to wintry Southampton in absolute terror. Then Anna is told she's had a miscarriage but is certain she's still pregnant. After that, things go crazy. Readers will devour the book to find out what's going on. The Ira Levin-like ending, with an interesting twist, comes out of nowhere. A first adult novel for Valentine, who writes for teens as Danielle Vega, Delicate Condition comes with a warning that it "contains scenes of miscarriage and childbirth, as well as cancer survival and implied animal endangerment."

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