CARNAL NATION

Irene Vilar's Impossible Motherhood was released last week amid a flurry of press.  Published by small imprint Other Press after rejections from over fifty other publishing houses, the book chronicles the fifteen abortions Vilar had between the ages of sixteen and thirty-three.  The Denver-based literary agent describes herself as an abortion addict, intentionally getting pregnant and then terminating the pregnancies to piss off her husband, a much older literature professor who believed that children killed sexuality. 

Vilar, notably, had a crazy upbringing.  Her grandmother was a Puerto Rican nationalist who got twenty-five years in jail for storming Washington with a gun.  Her mom committed suicide by jumping out of a moving car while Vilar and her dad were in it, and two of the author's brothers have heroin problems.  Impossible Motherhood is actually her third memoir; both 1996's A Message From God In The Atomic Age and 1998's The Ladies' Journal deal with Vilar's family history.

The mother of two has been promoting the book on national television, and people are quick to offer opinions, so much so that her story was picked up by trend-spotting site Buzzfeed.  Jezebel and the Huffington Post have both covered it, and at least one conservative blogger wants her put in jail.  But while people have been quick to talk about the book, it's hard to say whether or not anyone's actually bothering to read it.  People on both sides of the abortion argument are uncomfortable with Vilar's story, but meanwhile book reviewers are mostly just ignoring it. Bookslut was down on Impossible Motherhood back in July, saying the narrative "comes off as a therapy session and not a story."  But while the author herself gives the book five stars, word's still out about as to whether or not anyone else thinks it's a good read.