Product Description

"Joe and I had been forthright about children. I was pretty sure I wanted them, Joe was pretty sure he didn't. Since we each perceived in the other some room for movement, the difference didn't worry us. Then priorities shifted, needs changed...."

In her late thirties, journalist Jill Smolowe's life and career at Time magazine was on track. Her husband, Joe, was still her most trusted confidante and best friend. And now that she and Joe had decided finally to have a child, Jill assumed the pregnancy that had come so easily to all the women in her family would be her own next chapter. But nature had a different script in mind.

As her quest for a child swerved from the roller coaster of infertility procedures toward the baffling maze of adoption options, Jill's desperation deepened -- while Joe's resistance to children only hardened. In the fog of depression, disappointments, and dead ends, their marriage began to founder. Then, halfway around the world, in Yangzhou, China, she encountered a future she'd never imagined might be hers.

Honest and intimate, An Empty Lap is as much a window on a marriage as on a high-stakes baby chase. Compelling, beautifully told and as insightful as a novel, it's filled with emotions that anyone who has yearned for a child will recognize.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1078188 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com Review
How do you become a parent? In journalist Jill Smolowe's An Empty Lap, the journey to parenthood joins the "coming of age" book as a meaningful description of the passage from one stage of life to another. In her late 30s, Smolowe wanted a baby. Her husband Joe was, at best, ambivalent. An Empty Lap is about physical and emotional journeys: the Smolowes travel through doubts and resistance, fertility treatments, desperation, and depression; from doctor's office to doctor's office, vials of sperm in hand, to adoption agencies; and finally, from New York to China to full parenthood. An Empty Lap is well written and moving, but never sappy. And even though we know the positive outcome from the beginning, the process is both what fascinates and what is important. An Empty Lap is a journey deep into one couple's relationship. That Smolowe shares their innermost processes with us feels like a gift.

Review
Entertainment Weekly Engrossing....Smolowe's unromanticized understanding of what it takes for two highly opinionated adults to work through some of coupledom's most stressful challenges is what gives this book its appeal....She makes compelling general-interest reading out of a special-interest subject. -- Review

Review
The New York Times Book ReviewCOMPELLING....DEEPLY MOVING....EMINENTLY READABLE.

USA Today[A] heartwrenching account...readers of either gender will relate.

Entertainment WeeklyEngrossing....Smolowe's unromanticized understanding of what it takes for two highly opinionated adults to work through some of coupledom's most stressful challenges is what gives this book its appeal....She makes compelling general-interest reading out of a special-interest subject.

Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. Author of You Just Don't Understand and Talking from 9 to 5Reading An Empty Lap is like staying up all night listening to a friend filling you in on the important events in her life. You know how things turned out, but you want to hear all the details. Jill Smolowe's honesty is compelling. It's like a thriller, only the terrain is emotional.

Kay Redfield JamisonAuthor of An Unquiet Mind and professor of psychiatry, The Johns Hopkins School of MedicineExtraordinarily moving, and wonderfully written, An Empty Lap is one woman's account of love, hope, lost hope, and then, finally, great and well-earned joy. The book is completely engaging. Jill Smolowe and her husband endured much to adopt a child but, when at last they succeed, their delight is utterly and boundlessly contagious. The complexities and resilience of their love story are woven together in a riveting way.

Customer Reviews

Future Mom of Chinese daughter
A very compelling and touching story. As we wait for our China Baby this was helpful to walk through the process of others and give hope that our day will come too.

Extremely Relevant for any prospective adoptive parent
An Empty Lap is not all smiles and hugs, but adoption is a serious and demanding effort, and An Empty Lap gives an honest appraisal of the struggles - and the triumphs - one real world couple experienced when they pursued the path of adoption.

I would encourage anyone considering adoption to read An Empty Lap, and if international adoption is anywhere on your horizon of possibilities, this is clearly a "Must Read" item. While the international adoption scene is constantly shifting, the lessons in An Empty Lap will apply to any international adoption, regardless of the country of origin.

That the author chose to give a real and imperfect face - that of her and her husband - to the challenges of adoption only serves to make An Empty Lap that much more relevant to the real world that you, the prospective parent, will face. Written in an engaging and literate style, you will come away more learned than you began...and much like adoption itself, in the end you get a happy ending.

Very personal, deserves a total read
This is a book that must be read from beginning to end. It starts off kind of hard to take-- two adults seemingly set on pursuing their own goals, almost selfishly, certainly idealistically and wholeheartedly "90s." Why would anyone care? But as the book progresses,it becomes clear that it's really about the openness to love. And when the husband--at first a very reluctant father-- holds his adoptive daughter Becky in his arms and sings to her, the gap closes, the links forge. If you're a parent, imagine your child has been lost-- at a beach, an amusement park, a shopping mall-- wouldn't you put aside your own needs and desires and come together with your partner/spouse to find the child? Wouldn't the child become not only the focus but at that moment--and perhaps many others--the single most important thing in your life? I think maybe that's what happened with this couple, and this book is about their journey to that willingness, that openness-- that love. I dunno, but in my humble opinion (and as a mother), I saw this book to be about...sharing. If they could do it, so could we. I'd like to see a followup. I bet Joe and Jill have never ever looked back. And I bet, too, that Becky is a pretty happy kid.