Gas and air : tales of pregnancy, birth and beyond

22 stunning tales of pregnancy, birth and beyond...Emily Perkins, Polly Samson, Peter Carey, Julia Darling, Judith Bryan, Roddy Doyle, Jill Dawson, Chandani Lokuge, Eva Sallis, Margo Daly, Bridget O'Connor, Christopher Cyril, Alice Jerome, Bernard Cohen, David Guterson, Kathy Page, Kathryn Heyman, Nikki Gemmel, Simone Lazeroo, Hannah Fink, Nick Hornby, Rosie Waitt This highly varied and vibrant mosaic of fiction and memoir by some of our finest contemporary writers captures the individual and unique, as well as the quotidian and universal, in the birth experience.

As Kathy Page's narrator puts it to her baby, 'You and I, the two of us, moving on, but the same time going back, where everyone has been before.' Here are the alterations of consciousness, the anxieties, vulnerabilities and glories of mothers; the baffled and triumphant perspectives of fathers.The full range of experience of new parents has been included, so that along with the intensity, joys and passions, there are still-births, unwanted pregnancies, post-natal depression, resentment of the father (who is at least able to slip out for a pint of Guinness - superbly captured in Jill Dawson's 'Twilight Zone'), plus autism, feelingly described by Nick Hornby.

This is a moving and enlightening anthology, one to satisfy the cravings of expectant parents, certainly, but also for everyone else keen on fine prose and curious about the beginnings of life for us all.