Official Review: Emer's Baby by EM Commins
Posted: 16 Mar 2020, 12:18
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Emer's Baby" by EM Commins.]
It’s 1968, and a young woman named Carmel leaves her family home in Ireland and sets off for London to get a job in the bustling city. She stays with her mother’s old friend Sissy Malone, a hard spoken and formidable woman with warped views of her own omnipotence. Her religious intensity and her fanatical convictions are about to change Carmel’s life forever.
Carmel herself is meek and amenable, so when Sissy comes to her with a plot to steal a 24-week-old baby that is due to be aborted in the clinic in which Carmel works, Carmel doesn’t put up much of an argument. 16-year-old Irish teenager Emer Regan travels to London from Ireland for an abortion that has been forced onto her by her parents. She undergoes her abortion and returns home, having no idea that Sissy and Carmel revived the baby and brought him home to raise him as though he is Carmel’s son.
Emer’s Baby by EM Commins is an intense tale of kidnap, assault and trickery, yet it is written like a family drama and this is what I liked least about it. It was a strange and unnerving juxtaposition of plot and style. As an Irish woman, what I liked most about this book was the use of Irish slang and phrases throughout the dialogue; they reminded me of my childhood, when they were used more commonly.
I rate this book a 1 out of 4. It was poorly edited, and the chapter lengths were quite inconsistent. The narrative point of view constantly shifted between characters without notice, even in the middle of paragraphs. There were a lot of typos too. As for the content, I would have preferred a more open conversation within the book, addressing the emotions that all these characters went through when this traumatic incident occurred.
As someone who grew up in Ireland, I know first-hand how much abortion has been a hot button and divisive issue in our society, so I was excited to read a historical fiction book on the subject, but I was disappointed. While the book accurately portrayed the outward nature of Ireland at the time, I feel the author avoided the inner turmoil of the subject matter and was uninterested in exploring beyond the surface level of the issues the story raised, leaving them unresolved. For this reason, along with the disjointed editing and poor syntax, I feel this book deserved a 1 instead of a 2.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone who could be upset by topics such as abortion, physical abuse or child abuse. I also wouldn’t recommend this book to children as it deals with very sensitive topics. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a small glimpse into what life was like for Irish women in the recent past, and everything they endured thanks to the Irish culture of staying quiet.
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Emer's Baby
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
It’s 1968, and a young woman named Carmel leaves her family home in Ireland and sets off for London to get a job in the bustling city. She stays with her mother’s old friend Sissy Malone, a hard spoken and formidable woman with warped views of her own omnipotence. Her religious intensity and her fanatical convictions are about to change Carmel’s life forever.
Carmel herself is meek and amenable, so when Sissy comes to her with a plot to steal a 24-week-old baby that is due to be aborted in the clinic in which Carmel works, Carmel doesn’t put up much of an argument. 16-year-old Irish teenager Emer Regan travels to London from Ireland for an abortion that has been forced onto her by her parents. She undergoes her abortion and returns home, having no idea that Sissy and Carmel revived the baby and brought him home to raise him as though he is Carmel’s son.
Emer’s Baby by EM Commins is an intense tale of kidnap, assault and trickery, yet it is written like a family drama and this is what I liked least about it. It was a strange and unnerving juxtaposition of plot and style. As an Irish woman, what I liked most about this book was the use of Irish slang and phrases throughout the dialogue; they reminded me of my childhood, when they were used more commonly.
I rate this book a 1 out of 4. It was poorly edited, and the chapter lengths were quite inconsistent. The narrative point of view constantly shifted between characters without notice, even in the middle of paragraphs. There were a lot of typos too. As for the content, I would have preferred a more open conversation within the book, addressing the emotions that all these characters went through when this traumatic incident occurred.
As someone who grew up in Ireland, I know first-hand how much abortion has been a hot button and divisive issue in our society, so I was excited to read a historical fiction book on the subject, but I was disappointed. While the book accurately portrayed the outward nature of Ireland at the time, I feel the author avoided the inner turmoil of the subject matter and was uninterested in exploring beyond the surface level of the issues the story raised, leaving them unresolved. For this reason, along with the disjointed editing and poor syntax, I feel this book deserved a 1 instead of a 2.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone who could be upset by topics such as abortion, physical abuse or child abuse. I also wouldn’t recommend this book to children as it deals with very sensitive topics. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a small glimpse into what life was like for Irish women in the recent past, and everything they endured thanks to the Irish culture of staying quiet.
******
Emer's Baby
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon