This Lovely Life

Book excerpt: One woman’s true story of raising a child born three months premature—“propulsive, startling, and vivid, like motherhood itself” (Meg Wolitzer, New York Times–bestselling author of The Female Persuasion). Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing only one pound each, at twenty-three weeks’ gestation. During the delivery she begged the doctors to “let her babies go”—knowing all too well that at their early stage of development they would likely die and, if they survived, would have a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiply disabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube. This Lovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of the Forman family after the birth of the twins—the harrowing medical interventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death. In the end, the long-delayed first steps of a five-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of a triumph narrative. Forman’s intelligent voice gives a sensitive, nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventual acceptance in this portrait of a mother’s fierce love for her children. “Intimate, compelling, and hopeful—an absolutely important book.” —Rachel Simon, author of Riding the Bus with My Sister