The Art of Waiting

“[A] thoughtful meditation on childlessness, childbearing, and—for some—the stretch of liminal agony in between. [ The Art of Waiting] is a corrective and a tonic, a primer and a dispeller of myths. It is likely to become a go-to guide for the many couples who discover that having children is not the no-assembly-required experience they were expecting. They will come away enlightened, reassured and comforted by her debunker mentality . . . Ms. Boggs has done something quite lovely and laudable with The Art of Waiting: She’s given a cold, clinical topic some much-needed warmth and soul. The miracle of life, you might even say.”—The New York Times

“Belle Boggs’s smart, elegant book, The Art of Waiting . . . includes reporting on eugenics, zoo animals and research behind ‘baby fever,’ tying in great works of literature and even Raising Arizona along the way. It is a painful, enlightening joy to read.”—The Washington Post

“An eye-opening, gorgeously written blend of memoir, reportage, and cultural analysis . . . Examining infertility and childlessness through the lens of her own struggle to become pregnant, Boggs presents not only a courageous account of her personal experience but an illuminating, wide-ranging study of the medical, psychological, social, and historical aspects of a condition that affects one in eight couples nationwide.”—Boston Globe

“[Boggs’s] beautifully written, contemplative book—which blends memoir, journalism and cultural history—is about much more than her own costly and high-tech path to parenthood. It addresses, among other things, the ethical dimensions of fertility treatment (she concedes that her younger self would have judged her choices ‘selfish and wasteful’); representations of childlessness in literature; and the biological, psychological and cultural underpinnings of what she calls child-longing.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“The Art of Waiting is not just an honest and heartbreaking account about Boggs’ experience. In addition to the endless medical options available to her and other women, she deftly examines the choices and challenges couples and singles face . . . Infertility is a personal struggle, but Boggs ably mixes her experience with a broader, more objective account of what for many men and women amounts to one of the most traumatic upsets in their lives. The Art of Waiting is a primer for anyone dealing with infertility. It’s also an eye-opener for anyone who takes having children for granted.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“Boggs’s meditations on the politics of reproduction and ART are eloquent and impeccably researched. Ultimately, however, her prose is most luminous when she is limning the subterranean psychic toll that infertility takes on its sufferers . . . ‘All families start as stories,’ Boggs observes, ‘no matter how true or untrue they eventually become.’ In The Art of Waiting, she illuminates the myriad ways in which the stories we tell ourselves about children—whether real or imagined, desired or declined—materially shape our sense of who we are. In the process, she makes a passionate and humane case for everyone’s right to choose and direct their own reproductive story."—Los Angeles Review of Books

“Belle Boggs's memoir-through-essay dissects what it means to procreate and parent in our modern world—and especially the myriad ways of getting there.”—Bustle

“In a book that could easily become insular, instead the reader finds Boggs’s considered, holistic approach, wherein she covers families of numerous formations and facets—different races, socioeconomic categories, and world views pepper this intelligent and insightful treatise on fertility, medicine, and motherhood, which spans years of Boggs’s life and years of research on childbearing, its successes, and its failures. Science meets narrative; the global meets the personal; the reader meets the author, or at least feels that way, a knowing closeness that builds with every revelation and dispersal of personal, painful fact.”—The Millions

“Boggs is both brave and generous—willing to hack through terra incognita and report back to the rest of us . . . Riveting . . . Deeply absorbing . . . Boggs’s experience of child-longing reminds us of our own desires, the virtues of letting go and the power of holding on. In every essay, she is recognizably human, attached to the future she always wanted.”—Brooklyn Rail

“[A] collection of nuanced and unsparing essays . . . Boggs interweaves her own experience with infertility with those of doctors, professors, unconventional families and even gorillas at the North Carolina zoo, shedding light on a complex human health issue that has remained cloaked in silence and shame.”—The Huffington Post