Issues of race, class, IVF propel writer Charlene Carr’s Nova Scotia-based thriller ‘Hold My Girl’

Questions about motherhood — its truths and its lies — occupy the heart of Charlene Carr’s tenth novel, an issue-driven thriller about a world where babies are conceived in Petrie dishes. If eggs are switched, fates change. This page-turning drama opens as Katherine, a young Nova Scotia mother, world class neat-freak, five-star worrier, obsessively searches for her keys in the “exquisite room” in the “stunning” house she shares with husband Patrick and beautiful little Rose, their IVF baby. Baby Rose, ironically, is discovered holding the missing keys, a potent symbol of her role in the tug-of-war family drama about to unfold.

Though admittedly high-strung, Katherine has reasons to worry. Her fertility clinic has phoned with a message about “a rather serious issue regarding your IVF procedure.” Whereas Rose, the joy of her life, is extremely fair, Katherine is “light-skinned for a Black woman, even a mixed race one.” Mother and daughter look nothing alike.

Next, we meet fragile, blond Tess — chapter titles alternate between the two women — working at her new lab job, doggedly reclaiming a life that is far from exquisite. Divorced, childless, Tess’s last chance at IVF motherhood, has failed, spectacularly.

When the two women see each other at a party at The Natural Ways Wellness Centre — where would-be mothers discuss “fertility diets, herbs and supplements, this drug or that” hoping to conceive — their meeting is awkward. “Blinded by hope and possibility,” Tess had once found the centre “a place where she could talk without shame.” Feeling utterly out of place now, Tess is approached by a sympathetic Katherine, who briefly hands her baby Rose — a gesture heavy with symbolism.

The women in the room are abuzz with the latest breaking news. A nurse has confessed. A “switch” has occurred at the IVF clinic where women go when “natural ways” don’t work. Carr’s tale both takes us deep into the brave new world of Petrie dish babies, and the stark contrasts among Halifax’s social classes. Katherine once ran a decorating business but now immerses herself in perfect motherhood in her perfect house — or at least at impersonating perfection. When, inevitably, a judge must decide who gets custody of little Rose, Patrick and Katherine sit in “plush seats,” green tea for her and sparkling water for him. A “stiletto-heeled assistant” ushers them into their lawyer’s office. Can money buy parenthood?

Then there’s Rose’s over-the-top first birthday celebration, which seems oddly worthy of royalty. When Tess gatecrashes the event, Katherine’s fake smiles hide her distress. Biology and class aside, Katherine has long endured Archie Bunker-level racism at her in-laws’ family dinners. She seems heroic for not calling out her exquisitely bigoted mother-in-law. (Readers will cheer her on.) Husband Patrick accepts it all casually, except when his father pronounces IVF an “abomination.” What awful people.

All family relationships in the novel seem rather wobbly, almost poisonous. Except for her loyal brother, Tess’s family is a minefield of a different sort. Her religious Polish parents were bewildered — her mother furious — when she quit college, married for security, then was cast aside by her rich spouse because of her fertility issues. She now finds escape in bars with strange men. Yet this apparently beaten young woman — a “wisp of a girl” in Katherine’s eyes — immediately turns into a lioness-mother when news of the IVF switch gives her hope.

Secrets from the past tumble out — why would a nurse deliberately switch test tubes in the lab? Soon the plot ratchets from simmering tension into high gear. In Biblical times, true motherhood was decided in the court of King Solomon. Today’s courts include social media debates about biology and visitation rights. It’s ugly stuff.

While exposing the potential for drama around IVF babies in Canada, where, Carr tells us, infertility affects one of six couples, Carr also shows us the strength of women who refuse to accept what nature has denied them. Instead, they relentlessly pursue every natural and scientific path to hold their baby in their arms. And when human beings — well-meaning or not — interfere, look out. A life without motherhood is not tenable, but neither, as it turns out, is one lacking tenderness and compassion.

SHARE: