Customer Reviews

What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir

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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.

What a fabulous book. It was so well written! Alice was so brave to re-live everything she went through in order to share her experience with us. I would love to read a follow up, part 2 in about fifteen years. As a DES Daughter, and never blessed with children, I can share in the fact that it would have been wonderful at thirty to find out I was pregnant. At forty-five and six months pregnant, not so much.

Imagine you are a 44-year old woman who, after engaging in behaviors and enduring procedures best avoided during pregnancy and taking medicines known to cause harm to fetuses, learns that, against all odds, has conceived! Such is the long story short version of the situation a divorced, engaged, mother-of-one woman found herself in in 1999. In What I Thought I Knew, Alice Eve Cohen recounts how it all came about, what went down, and her struggles with the related moral and ethical issues. The author makes no bones about her ambivalence about the baby. And while her honesty is admirable, her actions during the latter part of her pregnancy are disturbing as is her litigiousness. Admittedly, it's easy for the insured to judge. One wonders, though, what the child feels about all this. Ultimately, what turns out to be the best of the story is also the worst (brutal honesty), and what would make it, I believe, a good pick for a book club. Better: The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso, Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery, and Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu.

In Jewish folklore, declaring your good fortune aloud arouses envy and tempts the Evil eye. Alice Cohen opens her life to us in this book and how she coped, what she thought, how she acted and how she came to grips with the problems that seemed to overwhelm her.

Alice Cohen was happy finally, after infertility, an adoption, divorce, and now she met a man who filled her with happiness. Was she tempting fate? That is the question, and we hope to find the answer. Alice had been having such a good year and then small quirky health problems seemed to invade her life. She saw multiple physicians and the answer was 'we don't know' but it could be the hormones you are taking. Six months into this, after multiple exams, x-rays, scans, medications and untold specialists, Alice is told that she is pregnant, six months pregnant to be exact. No prenatal care and all those exams and tests. What about her baby, would she keep it, should she keep it, did she want to keep it, so many questions. Her fiancee, Michael, was shocked but happy. Her daughter, Julia was happy, so then what was wrong? Alice divulges, in detail, the ups and downs about the decisions she makes. She has a family now and friends and and social workers and physicians and students and all of them have their own point of view. What to do and how to do it. The hundred thousand dollar question.

Alice brings us on her ride, and her exquisite way with words, tempts all of us. This book is a quick read and can be read in one setting. You get the feel for Alice and her thoughts and her fears. This is an exquisite peek into a life, and it is a good ride. Enjoy!

Highly Recommended. prisrob 12-12-09

Alice is overwhelmed with her discovery about her pregnancy at her age, after years of taking hormone replacement pills and the belief she could not get pregnant. What a shock to learn her supposed cancerous tumor was in fact an unborn child. Her emotions run amok and though Alice writes of her roller coaster feelings, I don't think any of us (the readers) can grasp the magnitude of her situation. Everything she believed and some things for years, was just thrown back into her face as a lie. How then could she trust herself and more doctors to help her down this new journey? Throw in that the pregnancy is high risk, she is 44, she is a freelancer who has lousy insurance, and her story reads more like fiction than fact. It is so preposterous it is scary that it is true.

I read this in one sitting, unable to put it down. There are many times the reader is left guessing, as Cohen lets the story unfold in chronological order. We learn when she does about her baby's health, gender, and other medical facts. A friend thought she whined a bit too much but I didn't feel that way. The only area that could have used more attention is the lawsuit that is covered in the end of the book. It is glossed over and does not really give the reader the insight it could have. Jodi Picoult's novel, Handle with care, does a better job introducing this type of lawsuit and the havoc it can have on a family. I would have liked to read more about her eldest daughter and fiancé as well but that lack of depth does not hurt the story.

Strong read, not recommended reading if currently pregnant. Could be highly emotional and send someone into the What If game.

I noticed this book at my local (independent) book store, and when I read the inner-flap, I just had to pick this up.

"What I ThoughtI Knew: A Memoir" (202 pages) brings the improbable (but true) tale of author Alice Cohen's pregnancy at age 44 which went undetected for 6 months, including by many doctors. Cohen had adopted a daughter some years before in a previous relationship, and was told she could never have kids. But lo' and behold, she did get pregnant by her boyfriend, only to find out that the baby-to-be would have serious health problems, presenting the author with fundamental dilemmas (abort the pregnancy? consider adoption?).

The author brings her tale in real life terms, and I couldn't stop turning the pages. She is frank about her doubts of having the baby, and how it might impact her life with her boyfriend/husband-to-be, and her adopted daughter. This is in all a quick read, but a very powerful one. Highly recommended!

Deeply personal, this is a courageous telling of a most harrowing story. This would be a difficult book to digest, but Cohen finds humor in the most unusual circumstances and keeps buoyancy throughout. I read this book on a plane flying from coast to coast and I refused to put it down until I finished it. I don't highly recommend things often, but this is definitely a must-read.

So you're 44 years old and this is what you know: your life is looking pretty darn good, at long last. You're getting married in a few months to an all-around great guy, your adopted daughter is thriving, your career is more and more satisfying. Except for this large, hard lump in your abdomen, things are really looking up.

But that lump does not go away. In fact, it gets bigger. You are anemic, depressed, and more than a little worried about cancer, since you're a DES daughter. Your gynecologist assures you that everything is fine.

And then you get the word that you are pregnant. Six months pregnant. Which, you think, is an impossibility since you were told you were infertile and likely in menopause.

This is the scenario that Alice Eve Cohen faced. By profession, Alice is a solo story performer, and she does what comes naturally - she tells a story. And what a story it is.

Her insurance plan, predictably, sucks. No high-risk obstetrician wants to take her on since Oxford Liberty pays so little and so late. Since she IS a DES daughter, her cervix is likely to dilate early... plus, at her age, 75% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Oh yes, and she has a deformed uterus, no prenatal care (in fact, she was on heavy hormones) and a definitely ambivalent attitude about carrying to term. At six months, termination of the pregnancy is challenging and yet there's a good chance the baby might have major issues. Urggghhh!

Alice Eve Cohen's story veers from a black comedy to a Kafka-type nightmare. She doesn't try to pretty it up. Even those of us who are pro-choice will wince at her desire to end her pregnancy so late in the game, and precisely what that entails. Her inability to feel love for the fetus - soon-to-be baby - is in direct contrast to the love she feels for her adopted daughter, and is fueled, the reader suspects, by her high-adrenalin fear of facing the unknown.

She's besieged with doubts about what is loving and what is right. And she is forced to explore what it truly means to be a mother. It is biology? Unconditional love? Can a real mother's love by conditional? Is she a real mother...if she doesn't yet feel love, hopes it will awaken in her, and in the meantime gives us everything to protect the child?

Alice can be selfish. Temporarily insane. Infuriating! Yet her voice is authentic and candid and she doesn't shy from describing exactly how it was - and is. As we take the journey through doubt and a broken medical assistance, we ultimately arrive with her at renewal.

The book is a beautifully written and extremely honest memoir of the author's struggle with finding out that she is six months pregnant at age 45 - after being told that she is infertile. She allows the reader not only into her story...which you occasionally hear about but cannot possibly believe (women going to the hospital with intestinal distress which turns out to be labor) but also very much into her thoughts and actions. I have to say that for me - a conservative, Southern, Christian woman...there were some parts of this story that I absolutely could not relate to at all. However, out of respect for her honesty and because the writing was so compelling, I finished the book, and was glad that I did. It is a gripping tale, and it is extremely difficult to put down. I only hope that her daughter will be able to accept the book and what is within when she is old enough to know of its existence. It honestly depends on the prism through which you view life and its struggles as to whether you will find this book to be a bit shocking (as I did) or not. Either way, you will find that the story is told with such a degree of honesty that you are encouraged to just break through the masks, walls, and niceties that we all seem to be prone to to become a little more like the author in fiercely owning who she is and where she was at that point in time. From a readability standpoint...it is extremely easy to "jump in" and follow from the very beginning. She did an excellent job with the story, and I look forward to reading other offerings from her.

Alice Eve Cohen was 44, happily engaged to her soulful, artistic fiance, raising a beautiful and funny adoptive daughter and emotionally and financially viable. She thought her life was just about perfect. Alice soon found herself sick and exhausted with a litany of strange symptoms. Being pushed around from doctor to doctor, being given every possible test imaginable, her symptoms were routinely dismissed as signs of menopause. Six months into her sickness, while in the middle of an emergency CAT scan, the mysterious cause of her illness was discovered: she was pregnant. She now found herself with an unwanted first pregnancy at 44, having gone six months into the pregnancy with no prenatal care. She is deemed a high risk pregnancy and, with her horrid health care, is barely able to begin getting the care she needs. As the pregnancy progresses she is put on bed rest, told her child will most likely have some serious health issues and deficiencies throughout its life, and told there really isn't much she can do. When she contemplates abortion or adoption she is told by numerous people neither will do. Stuck, scared and ashamed of her feelings she is forced to face a situation she was never prepared for and never wanted to begin with. Even after the baby is born the worst case scenarious keep becoming reality until you can not imagine how she is still standing. How will she handle all the issues put before her? How will she ever learn to love this baby she didn't want to begin with?

This memior is amazing! I could not believe all the hurtles thrown in the path of Alice Eve Cohen. She was brutally honest with her feelings throughout the process, feelings many people would be ashamed to admit but feelings they would experience nonetheless. Somehow she combines this honesty with a unique humor and wit that makes the utter turmoil bearable. I am in awe of her inner strength, evident even as she denys having any. This is beautifully written and highly relatable on many levels. Kudos!(