Title: What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir
Author: Alice Eve Cohen
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Penguin Books
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Source: Review copy for Book Sparks tour
First line: This was going to be a solo show.
Alice Cohen was at the prime of her life. After a divorce, she had found a new love, a man who loved her and her adopted daughter. Her career as a solo theater performing artist was flourishing. She was teaching a class she loved. Everything seemed to be falling into place. Then she started experiencing bizarre symptoms, symptoms that, because of her age of 44, her doctors wrote off as the beginning of menopause.
After six months of her body doing the strangest things, Cohen was sent for an emergency C/T scan, which revealed the truth – she was six months pregnant. After continually being told she was infertile, this was a diagnosis that she wasn’t prepared for, especially since she had spent the first six months of her pregnancy taking high doses of estrogen. She also had other complications that indicated a high-risk pregnancy and delivery and probable genetic problems with her child. Alice’s diagnosis of pregnancy started her on an emotional journey of epic proportions, as she considered her options and doubted her ability to love the child who was growing inside her.
What I Thought I Knew is a brutally honest memoir of one woman’s journey through medical misdiagnosis and the subsequent fallout. I’m going to be completely honest with you: I don’t think I was a good fit to review this book. Yes, I gave it three stars, and that is because it is well-written and kept me reading to find out how things turned out for Cohen and her family. But, I have to admit, I had a very difficult time with this memoir, and my reasons will probably make some of you angry. Please understand that this will be less of a review and more of a personal reaction to Cohen’s story.
Spoiler alert: my review will contain spoilers, but not any that I think are major enough to take away from anyone’s experience reading What I Thought I Knew.
Cohen is very liberal. While I consider myself moderate in some ways, and anti-politics in general in a lot of ways, there is still one area where I remain staunchly conservative, and that is the issue of abortion. I am pro-life. I understand that many of you may wholeheartedly disagree with me, and I respect your right to your belief, and know that our country is founded on the right for us to disagree with each other on issues such as this.
While I respect Cohen’s right to believe that abortion is a valid choice when facing an unwanted pregnancy, it was very difficult for me to empathize with her as I read this book. When she first discovers she is pregnant, she is six months along. After the C/T scan, she has an ultrasound, during which she can see hands with fingers, feet with toes, and a baby that appears to be waving. Her first response to this is, “Can I get an abortion?”
In all fairness, Cohen had every right to be terrified about this pregnancy. Her own ob/gyn had completely missed the pregnancy, in spite of doing a pelvic exam when Cohen was five months along. She had taken high-dose estrogen, undergone X-rays and C/T scans, and had problems with her uterus due to a drug her own mother had taken in pregnancy. There was a high chance that this baby would be deformed, handicapped, or both. And yet her response to the first sight of her baby in utero made me recoil.
Cohen chooses to go ahead with the pregnancy, and ends up becoming very depressed. She starts to pursue the idea of giving the baby up for adoption after birth, in spite of the fact that her fiance – the baby’s father – wants to keep and raise the baby, no matter what problems the child is born with. As I read, I felt so sorry for him, as he must have felt completely helpless in the face of Cohen’s continued desire to not have this child, to not keep this child.
Ultimately, this memoir ends in a hopeful and life-affirming way, but I had a difficult time liking Cohen or empathizing with her. I completely understand that this is not the book or the author’s fault; it comes from the fact that the author and I come from completely opposite ends of the spectrum on this central issue, an issue that is so rooted in my faith that I can’t separate it when reading a book like this.
Having said all of that, I again want to stress that Cohen is a gifted author. She tells her story with self-deprecating humor, and their were scenes that had me laughing out loud. She uses lists titled “What I Know” to illustrate the thoughts going through her head during each stage of her story, and it works very well. I was also fascinated with the way some of her folk tale-based solo theater work intersected with the issue of desperately wanting a child.
Side note: I don’t want a pro-life/pro-choice debate to break out in the comments section, so if you leave a comment, please keep that in mind. Feel free to express your opinion of the review or my reaction to this book, but I won’t debate the issue and I will close the comments section if it becomes a hotbed of ideological debate.
(Disclosure: I was provided a review copy of What I Thought I Knew from the publisher for this book tour. Many of the links on this site are Amazon affiliate links. If you click on one of those links and subsequently purchase anything, I will receive a small percentage.)
I really enjoyed this book and felt like the author was dealing with both shock and depression.
Twitter: booksandmovies
says:
Kathy – most definitely! Her depression really came through on the page.
This definitely sounds like a compelling memoir. I am really unsure of what my reaction to Cohen would be without reading the book. I can only imagine the shock and disbelief she must have gone through.
Stephanie´s last post ..Book Review- Dangerous Neighbors
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Stephanie – it really was an unimaginable situation to find herself in.
it sounds like the author went through some really tough things and i think it’s very brave of her to expose herself in this way. i’m sure she had some idea of what reactions would be. wow.
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Marie – yes, she definitely was very brave to write her story – not an easy thing to open up about, I’m sure.
Twitter: BookAddictHeath
says:
Hi Carrie – I can totally see how the author’s reaction to the news of her baby would have put you off quite a bit. I personally don’t agree with you on the subject of abortion (quite simply I just think it’s an individual choice); however I had that instinctive feeling myself of recoiling at her initial reaction of “can I have an abortion?”
However, I did enjoy the book because ultimately it ended up on a hopeful note and I felt like the ending showed that we all have to get to the right choice for us in different ways… Cohen certainly took a different route to her happiness than I probably would have, but she still got there.
Ahh, didn’t mean to ramble! Anyway, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this one.
Heather @ Book Addiction´s last post ..The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn
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Thanks, Heather – this was such a hard review to write.
Hi Carrie, this seems to me to be a very honest response to a very honest book. I appreciate your willingness to express your true feelings. I think you have tried to be fair to the author while stating how you were impacted by reading her experience. Memoir writers know that they are putting themselves “out there” and have to choose how vulnerable to be. The choice to write a memoir means voluntarily opening oneself up to the opinions of strangers. If someone isn’t prepared for that, in my opinion, they shouldn’t write a memoir. You were respectful with your comments and I found myself relating both to how you felt about what you read and how the author must have felt herself. I don’t want children and have often wondered what I would do if I ever found myself in that situation.
This book is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I was a premature baby. I was born at 26 weeks and shouldn’t have survived. Obviously, I did and have all my mental faculties. I experienced significant vision loss and use a computer with speech software and a seeing eye dog, but I’m glad to be here. I could have problems that were much worse and am thankful that I didn’t. I have a successful career as a counselor, live independently, and enjoy a normal social life. Its not always easy living in a world for sighted people, but I was blessed to have supportive parents.
I feel sure that, sometime early on, someone told my parents that I probably would have all kinds of issues if I survived at all and that they got a lot of negativity. Fortunately, they didn’t assume that all that was fact. I always feel sad for children who’s parents are too selfish or emotionally unstable to give them what they need, whether the child has a disability or is “normal.” I hope this author is being a good and involved Mom. If she knew she couldn’t be, another option may have been best. Parenthood certainly shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Secondly, I had an additional eye disease come up in college. It was misdiagnosed as migraine headaches and further vision loss was the result of the misdiagnosis. That was frustrating and meds I took to control migraines I wasn’t having actually lead to severe anxiety and depression that was just something else to deal with. Even well meaning medical folks can miss things and we all need to be willing to ask questions, disagree, keep seeking answers, and be advocates for ourselves. Ultimately, whatever happens, the person it is happening to is the person who will have to live with it. My feeling is that we have to grieve our losses and then figure out how to accept what is true in the present and not be “victims of circumstance.” Life sstill has to be lived.
Carmella Broome
Author of Carmella’s Quest: Taking On College Sight Unseen (Red Letter Press 2009)
http://CarmellasQuest.LiveJournal.com
Carmella Broome´s last post ..Happenings and Shauna Niequist Reviews
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Carmella – thanks for your kind comments on my review. It sounds like you have done a remarkable job of overcoming the obstacles in your life – good for you.
Thank you for such an honest review. I think I would have a hard time with this one. I do find that when I read memoirs it is hard for me not to judge the author’s decisions and that can distract me from the story they are telling.
Kathleen´s last post ..Some Sunshine for a Cold Winter day
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Kathleen – It’s hard, isn’t it? It’s one thing to not care for a character in a novel, but when you don’t like the main character in a memoir, it’s kind of personal, since it is the author.
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