Believe it or not, I am still trying to catch up on recaps for books I read last year, and today we're going to cover one of them. Despite this book being by one of my all-time favorite authors with a title that sounds tailor-made for me, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth so I've just been putting off writing this recap even though I've pretty much known exactly what I want to say since finishing this one shortly after it was published last October.
I mean, "Tea with Elephants"?! Come on. Do y'all remember when I wrote an entire blog post about a tea cup my sister-in-law sent me that was shaped like an elephant? I would have bought this book based on the title alone no matter who the author was, but the fact that Robin Jones Gunn wrote it meant I pre-ordered it immediately after it was announced and opened it up to read as soon as it arrived in the mail. This should have been an easy homerun, and for the most part I really enjoyed it but you guys, ugh. It just didn't do it for me.
In this brand new series that Robin Jones Gunn is calling "Suitcase Sisters" (which is funny because this book fits solidly into her Sisterchicks format so why the new series?), best friends Fern and Lily end up on the trip of a lifetime to Kenya together, but both arrive carrying some heavy emotional baggage—recent job loss, a strained marital relationship, death of a close family member—and throughout their time together, they do what girlfriends do best: help each other process and heal.
Like I said, it was mostly a solid offering from an author I love. The descriptions of the lush Kenyan landscape, the exotic animals, and the warm and welcoming people were right on the money. The entitled young influencer Lily and Fern encountered was instantly recognizable. The little Katie Weldon Easter egg for longtime readers was fun.
But somewhere about halfway through this novel, Lily starts bringing up the fact that Fern has never had a baby and pushing the idea on her even though at no point did Fern bring this up on her own or ask for Lily's opinion. This was not part of the aforementioned baggage that either woman brought with them on the trip. And Fern has a stepson with her husband that she mothered and helped raise. By the end of their trip together, Fern has not only decided she now wants a baby, but when she gets home and informs her husband of this, they immediately get pregnant. This rubbed me so wrong. Now, full disclosure: I am the same age as Fern and Lily in this book, and I also have never experienced pregnancy or childbirth. Whether Robin Jones Gunn intended it or not, the underlying message that your worth as a woman can not be fully realized unless you have brought new life into this world through your body is so damaging. Especially to the countless women who so badly want children and for whatever reason, haven't had any. When I married my husband, I wanted a big family. I wanted to adopt, I wanted to be pregnant, I wanted a house full of kids, and my husband was on board. Over thirteen years later and God did not make us parents. And that's okay. It hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows and smiles, but can I just stand up on this soapbox for a minute and say this loudly for the people in the back: you can be a woman and have a joy-filled, God-glorifying, fully satisfying life without ever pushing a baby out of your body. You really can.
Just for funsies after finishing this book, I did a Google search for books—novels specifically—about women who have dealt with infertility. I found a lengthy list of popular ones on Goodreads. After reading reviews of the top fifteen or twenty in which every single woman or couple dealing with infertility ended up with a healthy child by the end of the book: I gave up. I'm not one to complain about representation in media (I mean, hello, I'm a straight white American-born woman, what do I really have to complain about?), but if any of y'all are sitting on a really great novel in which the female protagonist starts out wanting a big family, for literally any reason discovers that is not going to be her reality, and then she embraces that reality by the end: please pass that title along, thanks.
I know this recap got a little rant-y, and we even entered some spoiler-y territory as well, but I felt blindsided as I read Tea with Elephants and I obviously had some Big Feelings about it. So would I recommend it? I mean, if you want to read Robin Jones Gunn, this isn't the book I'd press into your hands. But if you don't have any underlying trauma surrounding infertility or growing your family, this might be a great option for you.
Did you ever get blindsided by a book you expected to really love?
No comments:
Post a Comment