A couple at odds over the question of having children makes for a compelling read
Absences can be tricky things. Easy to overlook until it’s too late, and hard to explain. Cathy loves her work conserving paintings. She assumes View of Scheveningen Sands, like her marriage, is complete and needs only careful maintenance. But chipping away overpaint reveals hidden depths from the Dutch Golden Age, creating a dilemma. Something beautiful but challenging has been suppressed. Her marriage is founded on a mutual agreement not to have children.
Cathy’s husband Noah is great with other people’s children. But the aftermath of a stillbirth ended his first marriage, and he can’t bear the woman he loves being pregnant. Early in their relationship, Cathy had an abortion. Her mother is increasingly forgetful and erratic. Her best friend is a great listener, when she’s not busy with her toddler or poleaxed by a miscarriage. Cathy feels alone in her predicament until she bonds with a single woman at a sales presentation for egg freezing.
Through painstaking restoration at the National Gallery in London, Cathy uncovers a beached whale, hidden because it was believed to be a bad omen. She faces the heartbreaking reality of her mother’s dementia. As she struggles to accept that she can have a baby or Noah but not both, there’s no suspicion of wife or husband looking elsewhere.
Second Self thoroughly explores the strain when a couple disagree on whether to have a child. But there’s an elephant – or whale – in the room. Cathy’s vocation is caring for the precious creations of others. I felt a growing urge to shout “adoption”. Surely, in her months of obsessively researching and contemplating, the idea would cross her mind? If there’s truth in the fact it doesn’t, it’s a sad truth.
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