My Little One
 Nancy Machlis Rechtman
 (Reviewer - Dr. Alma Bond)
 2003 PublishAmerica
 ISBN: 159286340X

Infertility has damaged Emma Bronfman's self-esteem, self-image & self-respect.

She & her husband, Steve, have been trying desperately to have a baby for years with no luck. At almost thirty-five years of age, Emma can't seem to get it together. Her beloved mother died several years earlier of lung cancer & her father is about to marry a young, fertile bimbo, & her in-laws are flying in to see their darling Stevie-boy.

She is at the end of her rope at her dead-end job at a business school where she teaches typing. & she is sure that Steve's late nights at a prominent Los Angeles talent agency means he is having an affair & is planning to leave her.

There are many surprises, both humorous & poignant, in store for Emma in her journey through this chapter of her life.

Sr. Associate Reviewer Dr. Alma Bond writes:

Emma Bronfman is a woman desperate to have a baby. She & her nice, hard-working husband have been trying to conceive forever.

The book takes us through the deep pain & heartbreak experienced by a couple who want to have a child & are unable to. There are several additional plots, one of which is that her sixty-year-old father is planning to remarry, & to add insult to injury, his fiancée is only twenty-six & pregnant!

In addition, Steve's mother is controlling & critical of his wife -- a mother-in-law from hell!

Despite the seriousness of the subject, My Little One is amusing, light reading. Rechtman uses an occasional turn of the phrase that is delightful. For example, when Emma & a friend find it difficult to talk to each other, they watch television together. She writes that “television is the last refuge of those who have nothing to say to each other” (p139). Elsewhere (p. 159) she wonders, “At what point do we stop playing pretend and actually become our parents.”

I also enjoyed Rechtman's terrific sense of humor. To make so disheartening a situation funny requires a special kind of talent, & I imagine the humor columns written by this author are quite entertaining. For example, the following conversation between Emma & her best friend, Jodi.
“Oh yes, your birthday's coming up soon!...Thirty-five's pretty traumatic, Em. You'll fall into a whole new age category now, thirty-five to fifty-five-year-olds in surveys, you know.”
“Consult your doctor before you begin any exercise program if you're thirty-five or older!” Emma chimed in.
“Mammography at thirty-five!” Jody added.
“Amniocentesis if you're thirty-five or older!”
“Oh, Em,” Jody said sadly.

Despite its humor, I suspect the book works best for women who are experiencing infertility problems & see their own despair in Emma's. As one of the customer reviewers writes on the Amazon.com website, the book makes her feel less alone in the situation.

I agreed to review this book because my daughter-in-law & son are going through a similar ordeal & I had hoped to learn something about the situation which would be helpful to them. Unfortunately, I found the book rather disappointing on that score. I had hoped for greater depth in characterization, which would give some insight into the emotional & physical causes of such a condition. What I found instead was a great deal of repetition as to how unhappy & defective being unable to bear a child made the heroine feel. The other characters are also superficially drawn, such as the stereotypes of the “good mother” & the “bad mother” & “the good grandma” & the “bad grandma.”

Since I have never been in Emma's situation, perhaps I am the wrong critic to review the book. I do not believe self-esteem rests solely on the ability to bear a child, & think something was already quite wrong with Emma's self-esteem long before she wanted to get pregnant. Even her husband says, “Why do you think your whole value as a person comes from whether or not you can have a baby? Why can't you see yourself as a complete woman whether you can have children or not?” Her answer is, “Right. That's why you need someone else to make you feel like a man.” (p. 165).

Emma's working life as a typing teacher is equally dreary. Another person in the same predicament might make her job a life-saver for the impoverished students. Teachers can do that, you know. If she couldn't manage that, why not go back to school &/or develop her one creative interest, photography?

Life is sad for many people, & we cannot always get what we want the most. The test of a person's character is how s/he deals with deprivation. If Emma buried herself in constructive work, she might forget about her “tragedy” & incidentally be more likely to get pregnant.

Also, she has a wonderful husband, although frankly, I don't understand what he sees in her. Emma's Aunt Iris had the right idea, when she said to her niece, “Nothing's going to change unless you make it change.” (p. 171).

While there is some slight change in her character by the ending, for me it is too little and too late. I'm afraid I simply do not find Emma an admirable person, or even somebody I would want to know more about. Perhaps it is just as well, as we never even find out if she manages to get pregnant!

Nancy Machlis Rechtman has had several children's plays produced, has written a humor column for a local women's magazine & has had her poetry published.
(08/17/03)

Dr. Alma Bond
2003©Alma Bond
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Reviewer's Bio:
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of ten published books, including:
The Deadly Jigsaw Puzzle;
The Tree That Could Fly;
Tales Of Psychology (2004);
I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde (2000);
The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel (1998);
On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery (1994);
Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1998);
Profiles of Key West (1996).

She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age Is A Terminal Illness, as an audio book.

She is also the author of a just published children's picture book called The Tree That Could Fly.

Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.