Amazon.co.uk Review
To have a baby or not to have a baby, that is the question that's facing Jane Green's heroines in her fifth novel, Babyville. Julia, Maeve and Sam are pondering the pros and cons of procreation; the effect that it could have on their careers, partners and lives.
The novel opens with Julia, a successful TV producer, with her legs straight up in the air, encouraging her boyfriend Mark's sperm to reach their destination. Julia thinks she wants a baby to fill the huge gap that has suddenly appeared in her life. But Mark thinks:

We don't make love anymore. We make babies. And we're failing.
Maeve, who also works in TV, is adamant that she doesn't want a baby or a relationship; she's happy as a single, ambitious, career girl: "The togetherness. The cosiness. That coupledom that is pure anathema to me." But she finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand and finds that her preconceptions turn out to be misconceptions. And finally there is Sam; voluptuously, glowingly pregnant at the beginning of the book, but near the end screaming at her beloved partner Chris: "You haven't been stuck in all day with a screaming baby. You have absolutely no idea what it's like for me." Chris feels "neglected. Abandoned . Unwanted."
Babyville is played out in the present tense, with a staccato style delivery, with beats of humour between the emotional labour. The emotions may be powerful and universal, but the prose style may need a longer fermentation period. --Eithne Farry

RELEASE NOTES:

At Fishermead medical centre, it's on the chair inside the entrance before you get to reception.

Found at Fishermead Medical centre after getting alert, will read and release again.

This was intensely readable, in a way that a lot of 'chick-lit' books are because they are mainly dialogue, easy to pick up and put down again, and don't tax the brain too much. In this sense, this book would be great for holidays, train journeys, and general time-filling. But in terms of great writing it is pretty average - the characters are never really that believable, and the male characters almost fade into the background by being so two-dimensional. It is also the second book I've read in as many months that follows the 'woman about to have an abortion but chickens out at the last minute' storyline, which I find intensely unrealistic and also incredibly cliched - authors seem afraid to depict someone actually going through with the act, which is weird, because so many books are happy to depict gratuitous murders, rapes and general acts of inhumanity, yet writing about a legal abortion still seems to remain completely taboo.
I think this book would suit someone looking for the above 'easy read' (I finished it in a couple of days) or someone perhaps more sympathetic to the themes of motherhood and baby-craving. If, however, you think you'd be dismayed by a book that portrays all women as desperately wanting children to the exclusion of all else, maybe go hunting for a different book!

RELEASE NOTES: