When she gives birth, after twenty hours of labor, he is at home, asleep, having stopped by the hospital earlier only to leave “for a work lunch, later for work cocktails, and finally for a late work dinner.”īefore we can delve any deeper into the mechanics of this spectacularly failed marriage, the novel veers abruptly into paranormal territory. Around this time, he moves out of the bedroom they share. She goes to prenatal appointments without him and sets up the nursery by herself, stocking it with “various infant containers” and “doll-sized pieces of newborn clothing” and gluing glow-in-the-dark stars on the nursery ceiling. After she insists on having the child, he turns away, shaking his head, and refuses to have anything else to do with the pregnancy. (“It had been an accident, technically more his fault than mine, but who’s haggling? And once it happened I felt I needed to accept it-I wanted to.”) Her husband, Ned, who is repulsed by the idea of children, tells her to have an abortion. Nevertheless, when she gets pregnant by mistake, Anna wants to keep the baby. Her sole mistake in life was in her choice of husband despite herself, she fell in love with a charismatic but predatory businessman who was less attracted to her than to her small family inheritance. Its heroine, Anna, is a virtuous, long-suffering suburban wife. Lydia Millet’s new novel, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, begins with an unwanted pregnancy.
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