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Why should it be that narratives about that sublime thing some women do--give birth--are so often either nauseatingly sentimental or irritatingly all-knowing ... sometimes both? There is surely difficulty in writing about something at once so singular, and yet mundane because it happens so often and to so many people. Maybe this explains the usual maddening reductiveness.
American novelist Louise Erdrich has managed, however, in her first book-length piece of non-fiction (parts of this book were published in Harper's, Ladies' Home Journal, Reader's Digest,...