Conception, by Kalisha Buckhanon

Conception was much more than I was expecting. The inside cover described almost an entirely different book from what I encountered when I sat down yesterday afternoon. Now that I've finished, after barely being able to put it down, I can understand why the writer of the synopsis was so flummoxed as to how to describe what was within. (I also have to add here, as a white woman, my perspective on this novel is, I assume, vastly different from that of someone who can relate more personally on a racial level.)

While the premise of the story, one about a young black girl from a broken Chicago family who winds up pregnant (by the drug-dealing father of the kids she babysits) and confused, is one I've read before, the conveyance was truly remarkable. The people were so fully fleshed out, and Shivana, the main character, grew and changed as the story progressed in a way that was both believable and absorbing. Her struggle to emerge from the black hole that her life had become, and her simultaneous inability to see beyond her Present, until, ironically, her choices were almost nonexistent, completely pulled me in.

The most unique aspect, however, was that half the book was told by the stream of consciousness of Shivana's unborn baby. The baby's story spanned over a century of potential mothers as well as each one's untimely demise, providing a historical context by following the black female experience from slavery through five different women, and ultimately converging with Shivana's path. The baby's soul uses the sum of these experiences to try and connect with Shivana in a last-ditch effort to be born.

If that sounds slightly surreal and out-of-context, it was. Each time the baby's consciousness took over a chapter, it jolted me a little out of the story, but the tales of the past potential mothers were fascinating, and as well told as the rest of the novel. Really, the part that pulled my out of the story the most was Shivana's relationship with a boy in her building, and their ultimate travel towards what they thought was going to be a better life. It didn't make any sense to me that this boy was conveniently there, or that he just happened to seem so perfect for her.

The resolution of the novel was a jolt, but it also spoke to how caged in a girl like Shivana, a girl who knew nothing about even the most basic geography outside Chicago, can be. For her, there was only one way out of her situation, and the harder she struggled to change her fate, the more dramatically things unravelled and pulled her towards the vortex. In the end, the title refers not only to the infant in Shivana's womb, but also the more subtle, daring conception of a different life.

Rating: five stars out of six - engrossing second effort by a highly-praised author