Review of What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Alice Eve Cohen draws on her skills as a one-woman show performer and storyteller to write a harrowing, moving, searingly honest memoir about the chaos that took over her settled life at age 44 when, after experiencing health problems and told she was menopausal and infertile, she discovered that she was actually six months pregnant.

I do not want to reveal too much about what happens next, because a reader should experience the story unfolding page by page, as Alice is told new "certainties" that are dashed again and again."What I Thought I Knew" is the perfect title for this memoir, and Alice writes out ever-evolving lists of her own feelings, what her doctors have told her about her condition, and her baby's prognosis.

Nothing goes as planned, and Alice suffers ambivalence, guilt, and crippling depression.As a memoirist, Cohen shares her feelings with spare, unadorned honesty.Can she survive this experience?Can she be a mother to this child?What makes a mother?A good mother?She explores these questions directly, in simple, often poetic prose.

I am not usually a huge fan of memoir and what is being called "confessional journalism," but Cohen breaks through any reservations I have about personal narrative.Once I started, I didn't want to put the book down, so I read it in one evening.What differentiates Cohen's writing for me is that she does not use distancing techniques of irony or snark. She is incredibly straightforward and pulls us into her experience, sharing her most intimate experiences in a way that illuminates the choice to enter motherhood, along with family dynamics, depression, the fallibility of the medical system, the value of community and professional support, and ultimately, the mystery of grace.

Product Description
A personal and medical odyssey beyond anything most women would believe possible

At age forty-four, Alice Eve Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she was engaged to an inspiring man, joyfully raising her adopted daughter, and her career was blossoming. Alice tells her fiancé that she's never been happier. And then the stomach pains begin.

In her unflinchingly honest and ruefully witty voice, Alice nimbly carries us through her metamorphosis from a woman who has come to terms with infertility to one who struggles to love a heartbeat found in her womb - six months into a high-risk pregnancy.

What I Thought I Knew is a page-turner filled with vivid characters, humor, and many surprises and twists of fate. With the suspense of a thriller and the intimacy of a diary, Cohen describes her unexpected journey through doubt, a broken medical system, and the hotly contested terrain of motherhood and family in today's society. Timely and compelling, What I Thought I Knew will capture readers of memoirs such as Eat, Pray, Love; The Glass Castle; and A Three Dog Life.

About the Author
Alice Eve Cohen is a playwright, solo theater artist, and memoirist. She has written for Nickelodeon and PBS and received fellowships and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches at The New School in New York City.

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