Trying
Chloé Caldwell’s inventive memoir Trying recreates her years of attempting to become pregnant.
Caldwell devoted much of her thirties to trying to get pregnant via intrauterine insemination. She developed rituals to ease the grueling routine: After every visit, she made a stop for luxury foodstuffs and beauty products. But then her marriage imploded with the revelation that her husband was a sex addict who spent thousands on prostitutes and drugs. When she began dating women and her determination to become a mother persisted, a new conception strategy was needed.
Blending experience with research, the book theorizes on the causes of infertility and surveys its representation in popular culture. Its title, a synonym for “challenging,” blends with a reminder that the term “essay” originated with the French for “attempt.” Wishing she could come up with a more profound extended metaphor, perhaps from nature, Caldwell draws on lessons learned from retail work, where she combated potential customers’ body image issues by promising “life-changing pants.”
The book’s fragmentary style suits its aura of uncertainty about the future. Sparse pages host a few sentences or paragraphs, interspersed with wry lists of celebrities who got pregnant, divorced, or came out; later, an extended run-on section replicates the disorientation of Caldwell’s former life crumbling. Comments on the composition process arise: Caldwell ponders how the fact of divorce will change the narrative as well as the course of her life. “Sometimes I wonder if I was mostly with him because of the easy access to sperm,” Caldwell writes. The open-ended conclusion suggests that loss can mean freedom; the choice is between novelty and surrender.
Trying is a candid, intrepid memoir that documents shifting desires by interlacing infertility and queerness.
Reviewed by
Rebecca Foster
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
