Julie Maxwell's novel plunges into obstetrics and gives any number of questions around conception and childbirth a vigorous going over. Her writing is singular and memorable, alarmingly frank, terrifyingly fearless, funny (when perhaps you'd sometimes rather it wasn't), clever, thought-provoking, by turns grotesque and charming. She uses comedy to lower your guard, then skewers you with impossibly difficult moral issues. Her two main characters are both women who suffer terribly in the process of trying to bear children. Additionally, one of them works in a special-care baby unit. Maxwell spares the reader nothing. It takes some guts to write this graphically; to do so whilst continuing to fire off stinging pellets of humour is skilful indeed, perhaps provocatively so. Maxwell maintains a high degree of ambivalence towards her characters so that it's difficult to say if she is championing or condemning their actions. They're hard to pin down on the spectrum of good to bad. This is a truly adult read, demanding that we flex our intellectual and ethical muscles.