The Delivery Room - by Sylvia Brownrigg (Paperback)

About the Book

Complex and deeply human, "The Delivery Room" is an engaging examination of the incomplete understandings that course between therapist and patient. Mira Braveman listens to the stories of her troubled patients and discovers she is not as distant from their pain as she might once have been.

Book Synopsis

It is 1998. In the safe haven of her London office--a room her husband jokingly calls "The Delivery Room"--therapist Mira Braverman listens to the stories of her troubled patients, including an aristocratic woman going through an intense infertility drama, an American journalist who is eager to have a baby, and an irritable divorcé who likes to taunt Mira about her Serbian nationality. As the novel unfolds, Mira discovers she is not as distant from her patients' pain as she might once have been: her husband Peter struggles with illness, NATO's threats against her country grow more serious, and submerged truths from her own past seem likely to erupt.

Compelling, complex, and always deeply human, The Delivery Room is an engaging examination of the incomplete understandings that course between therapist and patient, and a set of variations on the theme of motherhood--as well as a timely meditation on the meanings of wars fought from a distance, when ordinary citizens have to measure their personal griefs against the outrages experienced by those under attack.

Review Quotes

"The Delivery Room is a beautiful novel, rich and dense and satisfying. In Sylvia Brownrigg's hands, grief and longing are as sensuous a part of life as a fine meal or the touch of a lover. Brownrigg has perfect pitch for the English sentence, and she sees with amazing depth and tenderness into the hearts of her real-as-real characters--and into the reader's heart, too." -- Michael Chabon

About the Author

Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World, and the novels Pages for You and The Metaphysical Touch. She has a degree in philosophy from Yale University and lives in Berkeley, California.