The Grief of Others by Leah Hagen Cohen

The novel begins with a woman, Ricky Ryrie, who is in a maternity ward, struggling to come to grips with the death of her baby. He was born anencephalic, which is a uniformly fatal birth defect. The book then proceeds to explore the effect this event has on the rest of the family. The scene keeps shifting from the time of the birth, a year later, and then to events that happened years before, which sheds light on choices that Ricky makes. We find out fairly quickly that Ricky knew she was carrying an anencephalic child, but she chose to keep that from her husband John, and her two other children, Elizabeth (Biscuit) and Paul. The major themes are the effect of loss on each family member, both individually and collectively. The couple have singificant communication issues with each other--she resents being the bread winner, and her daily commute into the city, and he fears her asking him to get a more financially renumerative job--so they dance around each other in silence, gradually pulling apart. RIcky has grossly underestimated the damage that her secret will cause, and she is not grappling with the fall out as a result of her choice. But all that is changing a year afterwards, and while it is rough going, things do get better. There is a parallel story about a young man who's father has recently died, and the effect that a fellow grief traveller can have on a grief situation that is stuck. The novel is great advertsing for family therapy--these people really need to talk to each other!