Six Weeks

Publisher:

Price:

Buy on Amazon UK

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

A thoughtful well crafted book that looks at all sides of a complex issue with emotion and humanity.

Cons: 

Brief at only sixty-six pages, but this book fights well above its weight.

Six Weeks is an intimate novella, taking us through the emotional and intellectual struggle that its protagonist, Imogene, has to make in the frighteningly brief six week period available to her, in order to decide what to do about her suddenly discovered pregnancy. At the end of the journey there is a life or death decision to be made: should she have the baby or an abortion, keep it or put it up for adoption?

Imogene is a nineteen year old student and would have a difficult enough decision ahead of her at the best of times, but Immy is not a run of the mill college student with a single problem to tackle. There is her eight year old half sister to care for, an alcoholic mother and a boyfriend who wants to love her, but comes from an abusive family background himself. All of these issue complicate Immy’s dilemma and shape and influence her responses to the questions she has to bring herself to answer, one way or another.

In an intense first person narrative, Jessica Degarmo vividly shows and shares with us Immogen’s struggles  as she tries to come to terms with the hand that fate has dealt her and as she explores her own ways of reaching the final decision that she knows is going to shape her life forever.

This is both an emotional and a thought-provoking read that looks at all sides of a complex argument. It punches well above its relative weight and at just sixty-six pages manages to be both a page-turner and a thoughtfully crafted read. Highly recommended.