July 10 - July 17, 2009

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Product Description

A personal and medical odyssey beyond anything most women would believe possible

At age forty-four, Alice Eve Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she was engaged to an inspiring man, joyfully raising her adopted daughter, and her career was blossoming. Alice tells her fiancé that she's never been happier. And then the stomach pains begin.

In her unflinchingly honest and ruefully witty voice, Alice nimbly carries us through her metamorphosis from a woman who has come to terms with infertility to one who struggles to love a heartbeat found in her womb - six months into a high-risk pregnancy.

What I Thought I Knew is a page-turner filled with vivid characters, humor, and many surprises and twists of fate. With the suspense of a thriller and the intimacy of a diary, Cohen describes her unexpected journey through doubt, a broken medical system, and the hotly contested terrain of motherhood and family in today's society. Timely and compelling, What I Thought I Knew will capture readers of memoirs such as Eat, Pray, Love; The Glass Castle; and A Three Dog Life.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40837 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780670020959
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In this chronicle of a late-in-life pregnancy, New York City playwright and theater artist Cohen recalls an unlikely chain of events that, at age 44, transformed her life: "Three weeks ago I found out I was pregnant. Two weeks ago, I contemplated and rejected a late-term abortion. One week ago I was put on bed rest. I accepted my role as a miniature hospital, protecting a fragile life by lying on my left side and drinking Gatorade." Already the mother of an adopted daughter, Cohen's first experience with pregnancy is a minefield of physical and financial dangers: "A woman with no prenatal care for twenty-six weeks is a lousy insurance risk... To an obstetrician, she represents an expensive malpractice liability." Cohen questions herself-health, commitment and emotional readiness-and others while sorting through a growing mountain of advice, ultimately wondering whether one can ever be fully prepared to bring a baby into the world. Compelling, humanizing, and deeply honest, Cohen's narrative will get readers rooting for her growing family.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Alice Eve Cohen is a playwright, solo theater artist, and memoirist. She has written for Nickelodeon and PBS and received fellowships and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches at The New School in New York City.

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Customer Reviews

I couldn't put it down
Alice Eve Cohen draws on her skills as a one-woman show performer and storyteller to write a harrowing, moving, searingly honest memoir about the chaos that took over her settled life at age 44 when, after experiencing health problems and told she was menopausal and infertile, she discovered that she was actually six months pregnant.

I do not want to reveal too much about what happens next, because a reader should experience the story unfolding page by page, as Alice is told new "certainties" that are dashed again and again. "What I Thought I Knew" is the perfect title for this memoir, and Alice writes out ever-evolving lists of her own feelings, what her doctors have told her about her condition, and her baby's prognosis.

Nothing goes as planned, and Alice suffers ambivalence, guilt, and crippling depression. As a memoirist, Cohen shares her feelings with spare, unadorned honesty. Can she survive this experience? Can she be a mother to this child? What makes a mother? A good mother? She explores these questions directly, in simple, often poetic prose.

I am not usually a huge fan of memoir and what is being called "confessional journalism," but Cohen breaks through any reservations I have about personal narrative. Once I started, I didn't want to put the book down, so I read it in one evening. What differentiates Cohen's writing for me is that she does not use distancing techniques of irony or snark. She is incredibly straightforward and pulls us into her experience, sharing her most intimate experiences in a way that illuminates the choice to enter motherhood, along with family dynamics, depression, the fallibility of the medical system, the value of community and professional support, and ultimately, the mystery of grace.

A must read!
What a fabulous book. It was so well written! Alice was so brave to re-live everything she went through in order to share her experience with us. I would love to read a follow up, part 2 in about fifteen years. As a DES Daughter, and never blessed with children, I can share in the fact that it would have been wonderful at thirty to find out I was pregnant. At forty-five and six months pregnant, not so much.

Lots of courage, but........
Can I just start off by saying that I did throughly enjoy this book. I am in awe of the courage it must take to write such a book. To expose your true emotions and put them out there takes really a lot of heart and courage. For that I will give this author four stars. For me this book is almost more about her battle with postpartum depression. I think is some ways she had depression as her beautiful story was unfolding. I am not sure though that Alice would agree with me that this book was as much as her dealing with postpartum depression as coming to terms and learning to love her baby. Was it the depression or her situation that caused this termoil. Alice seems to focus on the termoil and the circumstances causing her feelings, but I have to wonder about depression, postpartum depression.

I am a midwife so I deal with woman in these situations alot of the time. I have moms calling me that are desparatly trying to deal with having (even a normal baby) a baby and getting back to normal lives. I have moms whom want to cut themselves..think about it....think about hurting themselves...hurting their babies...walking around like zombies with no supportive husband or familiy. I see this almost weekly in my practice. I can't say for sure that Alice was having a severe case of postpartum depression...I don't know her, but I wish I did so I could have given her a huge hug.

It takes courage to put yourself out there, but I wish she would have focused on her postpartum depression more. I do believe it could have helped other mothers...make it real..make them feel like their not alone. I though Brooke Shields book "Down Came The Rain" was amazing in this fact. It really helped us get women to start talking about it. We ALL have moments of "can't do this...didn't sign up for this..." but postpartum depression affects you different. My apologies to Alice Cohen if I am wrong, and her writing her book from the persepctive was different than how I perceived it. I believe she though could have made a more powerful message though by focusing more on it.

The book abruptly ended for me. I kept looking for more. I do believe we need to support our pregnant woman more in life.