Hannah’s Diary by Louise L. Lambrichs. 1993. Translated by Siǎn Reynolds. London: Quartet Books, Ltd., 1999. ISBN: 978-0704380813. 220 pp. Available at alibris.com and other online bookshops.

In Hannah’s Diary, the 1993 novel by French author Louise Lambrichs, the main character, Anne Périer, journals about the dreams she has had since her abortion: “For three nights now, I have been breastfeeding Louise. She looks at me with her china-blue eyes, she seems happy, and last night I dreamed of her laugh, and laughed with her. I woke with the impression that she had come back and that I would never lose her now” (36-7). Louise in the novel is the daughter Anne aborted two months prior to this moment. This French novel may present quite a challenge for many U.S. readers, particularly prochoice readers, because it features the relationship this woman has with her aborted fetus.

Hannah’s Diary is a complex psychoanalytic novel that chronicles Anne’s experiences during and after German occupation of France in World War II. In many ways, this is a novel about being Jewish in that time and place: “Anne” is the name Hannah (from the title) uses during the war, so she can pass as Gentile and avoid arrest by the Nazis. This novel is about the psychological terror experienced by someone who is passing. Anne’s identity at the beginning of the novel is disconnected. The abortion she has in 1943 happens because Anne, as a woman and a mother, is embarrassed to have gotten pregnant when she wasn’t planning to and Hannah, as a Jew, is afraid of upsetting her husband, who thinks this is the wrong time to have a baby. Robert, the husband, is Hannah/Anne’s tie to Gentile identity and, thus, to safety and what passes as normalcy. Although she does not want the abortion, she chooses it.

After her abortion, Hannah/Anne begins to have dreams about Louise, the baby she aborted. Through time, the dream-Louise grows and ages as she would have in life. Hannah writes in her diary, “I have been dreaming about her for almost four years.” and “The disturbing thing is the powerful sense of reality that comes from these dreams. For one thing, she is growing up. I’ve been dreaming in real time, if I dare call it that, from breastfeeding and the first time she looked around, to the bottle, then to solids, her first smiles, her teething and the tears that went with it, her first steps, her first words” (49).

In the U.S. prochoice movement, we have long been uncomfortable talking, or even thinking, about what happens to the fetus during abortion. One of the most powerful tools of the anti-abortion movement has been the accusation that we don’t care about babies, that we kill them. One of the powerful things, for me, about reading this novel was the experience of shutting down my automatic defensiveness about those accusations and thinking more carefully about what it means when a potential life is interrupted, when as U.S. poet Anne Sexton described it, “Somebody who should have been born is gone” (“The Abortion,” published in 1962).

Ultimately, this is a novel about healing. Hannah’s journaling and her dream-time nurturing of Louise are important steps in her healing from the traumas of war and passing as Gentile. Anne’s abortion is not the focus of the novel; instead, it is a metaphor, a symbol of the ways people cope with life when their autonomy has been taken from them. Louise and Hannah’s dream-mothering represent the life Hannah did not get to have and, at the same time, her efforts to reclaim her sense of self. This is one of the reasons I love this novel: for Anne/Hannah, abortion is a gesture of hanging on, doing the best she can, and  at the same time is the starting point for healing. Many of the patients in our abortion clinics in the U.S. feel similarly, I know.

The Mothers by Brit Bennett. Riverhead Books, 2016. ISBN: 9780399184512. 288 pp. Available as an ebook.

As a literature instructor who studies abortion and stigmatization, I read a lot of fiction and poetry about abortion. I’m happy to report that I have a new favorite: Brit Bennett’s The Mothers. This novel is the best I have read at leaving behind the simplicities of “prochoice vs. anti-abortion” and telling a complex, honest, and anti-stigmatizing abortion story.

What are our most difficult conversations about abortion, the ones that we wish we could avoid? Race, religion, the fetus, men’s experiences, money—this novel focuses a shimmering and compassionate light on all of these as it traces the reverberations from one high school girl’s abortion into the faith community of her African American church in southern California.

The novel is told in the plural voice of “the Mothers,” the women elders in the church, who bring their collective wisdom, compassion, and judgment to the story. The novel opens, “We didn’t believe when we first heard because you know how church folk can gossip. Like the time we all thought First John, our head usher, was messing around on his wife . . .” In these two sentences, Bennett establishes the Mothers’ tone, simultaneously understanding and disapproving, familiar, and just a little unreliable, always giving themselves an out in case they are mistaken. After all, they are the “church folk” whose gossip drives the story.

When seventeen-year-old Nadia gets pregnant a few months after her mother has killed herself, the community should not be surprised. After all, as the Mothers tell us, Nadia “had earned a wild reputation—she was young and scared and trying to hide her scared in prettiness.” Nadia’s father, absorbed by his own grief, cannot see her struggles. Nadia arranges for and has an abortion without his knowledge.

One of the things about abortion that Bennett gets so beautifully right is how hard it is for people to talk about. Nadia and Luke, her boyfriend, talk past one another, neither one ever saying what they really want. When they do get adults involved, the adults can only say the easy, stereotypical things about consequences and responsibility that, we know, cover over deep-rooted fear, disappointment, and guilt.

The scene in the abortion clinic is respectful, and spot-on accurate. There’s the angry mom who chastises her daughter in the waiting room: “‘Cut all that out,’ she said. ‘You wanted to be grown? Well, now you grown.’” There’s Nadia’s clothing: “she felt the nurse give her a once-over, eyes drifting past her red blouse, skinny jeans, black pumps. ‘Should’ve worn something more comfortable,’ the nurse said. . . . ‘Someone should’ve told you that when you called.’ ‘They did,’” Nadia replies. After her abortion, Nadia lies to her dad about her cramps and then sneaks out to a party that she really should not attend.

Bennett has successfully written a nuanced abortion story in which everyone gets it a little bit wrong and a little bit right, even the Crisis Pregnancy Center counselor who befriends Nadia’s boyfriend years later. The author makes it possible for us to sympathize with Luke and Nadia and their parents, even as we shake our heads (with the Mothers) over their failings. These characters are human, real, neither ideal nor flawed. When Nadia’s abortion story comes to light several years later, its aftermath reveals both the fragilities and the strengths of the church and its people.

The Mothers presents many different perspectives on abortion with respect and care, while refusing to participate in abortion stigmatization. It has been named a “best book of 2016” by NPR, Elle, Vogue, Goodreads, and Entertainment Weekly, all well-deserved honors. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.