Babyville

Once upon a time couples married, and shortly afterwards babies usually began to arrive. Nowadays things are different. Women needn't have babies at all, unless they want them. Julia, Sam and Maeve are Best Friends and have all, serially, done the same job in Television. They are very 'now' people, with excellent professional prospects, used to freedom, money and strings of lovers; but suddenly, in their thirties, they're suffering from emotional over-drive. Julia is desperate for a baby, to 'grout-up' the cracks in her faltering relationship with Mark. Maeve is desperate not to have a baby, cherishing her independence and ability to play the field. Sam has already given birth and discovered that babies are not always tractable and adorable - and there really is such a thing as post-natal depression. Used, effortlessly, to getting what they want, the girls are startled to find that Nature is less easy to manipulate than bosses and boy-friends. Chris, Sam's steady, loving, husband, takes most of the flak generated by Sam's persistent exhaustion. Julia, frustrated by her inability to conceive, blames partner Mark, and deserts him for a job in New York. He finds impulsive consolation in the arms of another woman - Maeve. It all becomes a precarious merry-go-round of friendship, love, and a search for emotional fulfilment. But, by the end of the year - the time span of the story - all three girls have, almost, grown up. Life may not have taken the paths they planned, but their friendships are still intact, and they've moved on to a new phase in their lives. Jane Green, a young mother herself, writes sometimes tongue-in-cheek, but always with sympathetic hindsight. Her writing style is chatty, and confiding. Thirty-somethings whose biological clocks are ticking ever faster would do well to read this novel - it provides much food for thought. (Kirkus UK)