Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
The "slyly ironic, frequently hilarious"(Time) memoir about angels, academics, and a boy named Adam...A national bestseller and an important reminder that life is what happens when you're making other plans.
Put aside your expectations. This "rueful, riveting, piercingly funny" (Julia Cameron) book is written by a Harvard graduate--but it tells a story in which hearts trump brains every time. It's a tale about mothering a Down syndrome child that opts for sass over sap, and it's a book of heavenly visions and inexplicable phenomena that's as down-to-earth as anyone could ask for. This small masterpiece is Martha Beck's own story--of leaving behind the life of a stressed-out superachiever, opening herself to things she'd never dared consider, meeting her son for (maybe) the first time...and "unlearn[ing] virtually everything Harvard taught [her] about what is precious and what is garbage."
"Beck [is] very funny, particularly about the most serious possible subjects--childbirth, angels and surviving at Harvard." --New York Times Book Review
"Immensely appealing...hooked me on the first page and propelled me right through visions and out-of-body experiences I would normally scoff at." --Detroit Free Press
"I challenge any reader not to be moved by it." --Newsday
"Brilliant." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Expecting Adam is an autobiographical tale of an academically oriented Harvard couple who conceive a baby with Down's syndrome and decide to carry him to term. Despite everything Martha Beck and her husband John know about themselves and their belief system, when Martha gets accidentally pregnant and the fetus is discovered to have Down's syndrome, the Becks find they cannot even consider abortion. The presence of the fetus that they each, privately, believe is a familiar being named Adam is too strong. As Martha's terribly difficult pregnancy progresses, odd coincidences and paranormal experiences begin to occur for both Martha and John, though for months they don't share them with each other. Martha's pregnancy and Adam (once born) become the catalyst for tremendous life changes for the Becks.
Focusing primarily on the pregnancy but floating back and forth between the present and recent and distant past, Martha Beck's well-written, down-to-earth, funny, heart-rending, and tender book transcends the cloying tone of much spiritual literature. Beck is trained as a methodical academician. Because of her step-by-step explanation of her own progress from doubt to belief, she feels like a reliable witness, and even the most skeptical readers may begin to doubt their senses. When she describes an out-of-body experience, we, too, feel ourselves transported to a pungent, noisy hawker center in Singapore. We, too, feel calming, invisible, supporting hands when she falls. Yet, whether or not readers believe in Beck's experiences is ultimately a moot point. There is no doubt that Adam--a boy who sees the world as a series of connections between people who love each other--is a tremendous gift to Beck, her family, and all who have the honor of knowing him. --Ericka Lutz
From Kirkus Reviews
Wickedly funny and wrenchingly sad memoirs of a young mother awaiting the birth of a Down syndrome baby while simultaneously pursuing a doctorate at Harvard. Sociologist Beck, now a columnist for Mademoiselle and a regular on the television show Good Day Arizona, became pregnant with her second child in September 1987, a time she and her husband now refer to as ``the month It All Went To Hell.'' To put it mildly, the unexpected pregnancy complicated their busy lives and academic careers. At the time, Beck kept a voluminous and detailed journal of her thoughts, conversations, and experiences, which provided the basis for these memoirs. Early in the pregnancy, Beck began having paranormal experiences that took auditory, visual, and tactile form. In what she refers to as ``the Seeing Thing,'' she would see brief, vivid images of where her husband was on his frequent trips to Asia. Calming voices spoke to her (and to her husband) in times of stress, and invisible helpers rescued her and her young daughter from a burning building. A Mormon turned atheist, Beck cannot explain the presence of comforting spiritual beings during her pregnancy, but she accepts them as real. Once Adam was delivered, she no longer felt ``like the focus of all that magic.'' Adam himself became the source of magic in her life, teaching her values unlike those she had learned at Harvard. In her son she sees wisdom, beauty, and a way of looking at the world that is astonishing and joyous. Besides a sense of humor that pokes as much fun at herself as anyone, Beck has both a sharp eye and a sharp tongue. Her portraits of Harvard academics, omniscient doctors, and uptight in-laws are priceless. Even skeptics will find magic in this story, and parents of a Down syndrome child will cherish it. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"A wonderful book, funny, unbelievably tender, and smart. It shimmers."
--Anne Lamott, author of Operating Instructions
"Expecting Adam is Martha Beck's meticulously written, uplifting, and compassionate account of being gifted with a retarded son who opens her heart to the deep intuitions that love can bring." --Judith Orloff, M.D., author of Second Sight
"Set half in Harvard and half in heaven, Expecting Adam is a tough-minded yet tender-hearted book of spiritual discovery--a rueful, riveting, piercingly funny, thoroughly modern and deeply old-fashioned memoir. In short, a book to be reckoned with." --Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way
"I can't believe I almost didn't read this book. The thing is, I thought it was about a lady who had a baby with Down Syndrome. This is like saying ANNA KARENINA is a book about a lady who commits suicide. In fact, this book is about matters so important and yet so totally way-out that I would accept no one but a comic genius with seven years at Harvard under her belt telling me about them. That's Martha Beck: funny, companionable, razor-sharp, down-to-earth, and onto the Big Secrets of Life Itself. Anyone considering having a child should have to read this book. It has changed some of my thinking about pregnancy and about children with disabilities, and I don't think it's too much to say it could change my life."
--Marion Winik, author of First Comes Love and The Lunchbox Chronicles
"Expecting Adam is not one of those grit-your-teeth, lemons-into-lemonade sagas that leave the reader feeling more besieged and guilty than the writer. It is a long hymn, from a practical woman caught flatfooted by amazing grace. Martha Beck is a celebrant skeptics can trust."
--Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Most Wanted and The Deep End of the Ocean
"I laughed. I cried. I couldn't put it down. I didn't want it to end. I wish I knew Adam and his family--and of course I do. A brave, uplifting, life-transforming book." --Sophy Burnham, author of A Book of Angels
"With uncommon sense and dependable wit, Martha Beck unravels every assumption about the meaning of life, choice, love--and the wisdom of pursuing happiness through any of the usual routes. If Expecting Adam raises suspicions among more rational readers that Martha Beck is slightly crazy, it raised my hopes that I'd catch it from her." --Mary Kay Blakely, author of American Mom -- Review
Martha Beck is smart, willing to confide in the reader, good at concise description and very funny... -- The New York Times Book Review, Susan Cheever
Customer Reviews
one of my all time favorites
I've been in a book club for 20 years. We've read a lot of wonderful books. This is truly one of my favorites. It's a book filled with miracles. I wonder who couldn't believe that there's a God after reading this book. Though it's been quite some time since I've read it, I still get chills when I tell someone about it. This is a book that will show you that God has a plan and a purpose, even though we don't always understand or see it. If you want a book that will make you laugh, make you cry and make you a beliver, this is it. Thank you Martha, for sharing your wonderful story with us.
A wonderful book -- no matter how much of it is factual.
I picked up "Expecting Adam" thinking it would be a quick and mildly enjoyable read, something I might enjoy for the subject matter but not much else.
I was very pleasantly surprised, then, when I started reading and became quite emotionally involved in the story. Maybe it's just because I'm four months pregnant, but I found Martha and John's semi-mystical attachment to their son and their decision to keep him deeply affecting.
Without becoming a diatribe on one side or the other of the culture wars, "Expecting Adam" delves humanly and personally into the way our society views and treats those it views as imperfect or "damaged."
Although I read many other reviews questioning Beck's sanity and veracity in recounting events, and some even lambasting the novel's sentiment as fake in light of Martha and John's subsequent divorce, I think these criticisms miss the mark.
Spiritual and religious experiences are not as rare and explicitly supernatural as some would think, but even if Beck were crazy, the book is still lovely. As to its accuracy, again -- I think it's value, for me, was not in the accuracy of its facts but in its emotional truth. And as for John and Martha's divorce, all I can say is that these are real people -- their lives don't even with the book, and their lives won't be as neat or predictable or apparently cohesive as characters in a work of fiction.
All in all, you should probably read this book not for an accurate portrayal of the Harvard community in the late '80s, or a perfectly objective recount of events, or even for what it's like to raise a child with Down's. Read the book for Beck's story and the heartrending -- I mean that positively! -- way her life changes during her pregnancy with Adam.
Loved/Love this Book
This book is beautiful, funny and absolutely moving. Martha Beck's writing really touches me. I found myself drawn to the unfolding events in the book. What a gift! What a journey!
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