Review: The Family Way by Tony Parsons

The Family Way, by Tony Parsons, Harper Collins, €14.99.

Published in the Sunday Business Post, Sunday, July 25, 2004. Reviewed by Alex Meehan

Infatuated with the idea of the family?Desperate to conceive? If so, Tony Parson's latest novel The Family Way, with its themes of fertility and parenting, is likely to strike a chord. Parsons' best known novel, Man and Boy, was the tale of a single father struggling to bring up his son. It has sold around two million copies, appeared in 30 languages, and won numerous awards, including Book of the Year in Britain.

His subsequent novels, One for my Baby, and Man and Wife, were also best sellers but, once again, were written from a male perspective.

So it's slightly surprising to discover that, this time around, the central characters in The Family Way are all women. For an author that has more or less carved a literary career out of deconstructing the modern man for a female audience, this amounts to a sizeable departure.

The story revolves around three sisters, Cat, Megan and Jessica, and their struggles with fertility - one wants a baby but can't conceive, one finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand, and the third scorns the idea that women need to reproduce at all, but ends up deciding that a baby might not be such a dreadful thing after all.

So far, so uninspiring. But what's interesting is how Parsons deals with the minor male characters in the story. His female characters live in a world dominated by babies, and since making babies involves men, we get a balanced male/female view of conception and of bringing up kids.

The main focus of the novel is Megan, a trainee GP in Hackney struggling to deal with social realities while trying to practise conscientious medicine. Megan has recently dumped her long-term but unfaithful boyfriend, only to get knocked up at a party by a tall and attractive Australian diving instructor. She isn't ready to have a baby.

Her sister Jessica, on the other hand, has been happily married for six years and is ready to have a baby, but can't. Together with her husband, Paulo, she embarks on IVF treatment, and all the indignities that go with it, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Paulo's brother Michael has had a baby with his Japanese wife Naoko, but isn't happy with the effect that it's had on his marriage, so he's playing away with the receptionist at work.

The oldest of the three sisters, Cat, is Parsons' poster girl for independent women. Scarred by the memory of her mother's desertion at the age of 12, she starts out not wanting a baby at all, instead embracing her career in catering, but eventually changes her mind.

The only problem is that her man already has a teenage son and has endured a vasectomy, and the last thing he wants is to start changing nappies all over again. The most interesting thing about The Family Way isn't the meandering storyline, but rather the way in which the tale is told.

Even though the main characters are women and the story is told in their words and through their eyes, it is through the male characters with whom they interact that we actually get the most insightful observations. While Parsons does a good job of creating three sympathetic female lead characters, it's clear that his real talent continues to lie in exploring the male psyche: the husband who can't father children; the other husband who can but is jealous of the attention the children get; the single father desperate for a role in his new baby's life; the older father who has already been there, done that and doesn't want to do it again.

These are the stories worth reading the book for. Parsons writes from the woman's perspective, but masterfully informs from the man's. The Family Way won't keep you on the edge of your seat, but will hold your attention until the last page