Author, Betty Woodcock, sent me a copy of her novel, The Pram. Honestly, I don’t find the cover too appealing, but it disguises a bit of a gem.
Description from Amazon:
When Carrie buys a secondhand pram for her eagerly awaited grandchild, she becomes trapped in a horrifying nightmare world, terrorised by her own aborted baby . . . already worried that only she can see the phantom baby in the pram, Carrie is appalled when her granddaughter is placed beside it and the two merge. Unsure if she has imagined this, she tells no one. And so her nightmare begins . . . She is shocked when the phantom converses with her in her mind . . . especially when it claims to be her own aborted child. Horrified, torn between a mix of love and revulsion for her grandchild and terror of the intimidating invading spirit, Carrie doesn’t know what to do. Then she begins to see ghosts, and is convinced she is losing her mind. The mind-to-mind conversations become menacing and Carrie panics and sometimes answers the baby aloud, causing misunderstandings with her daughter. She dreads that her grandchild will never outgrow this weirdness which is becoming terrifyingly entrenched. So when her long-ago lover’s unexpected return to her life coincides with vindictive blasts of pain in her head, she can’t resist asking for his advice. He is intrigued by Carrie’s heavily censored story, and too late, she realises she has made a mistake . . . he also has a genetic link to the malevolent She must keep them apart because neither of them know that he is the father.
Review
The Pram recounts the frightening experience of Carrie M. as she is terrorised by the ghost of her worst mistake. Told largely in the first person, The Pram drops the reader into the mind of the main character. While not a huge fan of first-person narratives, it is pretty effective in this particular case. It provides you with a very clear understanding of her thoughts, thought processes, worries, and very real fears as she tries to come to terms with the existence of what she considers to be an alien being within her grandchild. This inside knowledge did leave me feeling a little bit like Carrie made a snap decision about Baby, though. While this may, in fact, have been the right decision, in the end, she never once considered that the baby might be benign. She accepts that the other ghosts are and even takes Baby’s word for it, but she never pays Baby the same courtesy. This, coupled with the abrupt manner in which Carrie treats her daughter in order to disguise her dislike for the baby, left me disliking her. I get that she was terrified, and who can be expected to be at their best when in the grips of terror? I should give her a little leeway on the issue, but I still didn’t like her. In fact, I didn’t like most of the characters. I found Carrie’s daughter to be annoying and Gervaise false. I kept waiting for him to turn out to be the baddie somehow. But a person can like a book without liking the characters. Unlikeable characters are just as valuable as goodie-goodies. I think they seem more life-like.
The writing is clear and easy to follow. There are a few typos, but not enough to spoil the read. I considered it to be a really satisfying read, with one exception. Unless this is meant to be an allegory on the power of God (how he can easily accomplish what humans are unable to even when they try their hardest), the whole thing felt like it wrapped up a little too quickly and easily. All-in-all, it’s worth the read. I read it on an international flight, and it easily passed the time for me.
