Lez get literary: Review of ‘One Good Egg’

Suzy Becker’s book “One Good Egg” (ISBN-13: 978-1608192762) out on Bloomsbury USA.

BY BETT NORRIS
Lesbian.com

“One Good Egg” by Suzy Becker is published by Bloomsbury USA.

All the rage these days, graphic novels, I mean. Lesbians trying to get pregnant? That’s just a stereotype, right, since the days of “Queer as Folk,” and before.

Here’s the new thing. The freaking Supreme Court just struck down DOMA, people of our ilk are getting married and having children, and our kids are just like everyone else’s kids now. What a world.

Becker’s illustrated memoir takes us along on the very funny, very intimate, four-year journey to have a baby. All’s well, people. No sad endings. Keep moving, those who like to watch train wrecks. This is a humorous, very moving and extremely close look at what millions of women who struggle with trying to conceive go through.

Becker, whose previous books include “I Had Brain Surgery, What’s Your Excuse?” (seriously, I just wanted to throw out that title) takes us through each hilarious and heart-wrenching step, from deciding at age thirty-nine, single after a breakup, to go ahead and have a baby on her own. She shares such awkward and funny moments as asking her best friend to be her sperm donor (imagine that silence after she popped the question) through all the steps, stages, trials and errors that follow, including finding a partner and getting married, storing sperm in a sperm bank, inseminating at home 101, all the way to hormone therapy and manipulation of follicles, to IVF (I love that I know what these acronyms are now) to heart-wrenching miscarriage, to success.

I have never wanted to have a baby, never wanted to be a parent. At all. So those of you who might be thinking this book is not for you are just wrong. You will love it, the humor, the illustrations, the situations so laden with absurdity and vulnerability that you must laugh to prevent the tears. And yea! Happy ending. The one good egg.

Um, in case that didn’t sway you to purchase this book immediately, there are dogs in it. Still no?

It’s funny. I did mention the humor and the illustrations? The almost farcical circumstances that arise?

This is a great book to give for Mother’s Day, to friends who are thinking about having babies, to old lesbians who never considered it, to dads, and to your adult kids, to show them how much they are wanted and loved.

Bett Norris is the author of “Miss McGhee” and “What’s Best For Jane.”