Synopsis:
The Push meets The Silent Patient in Delicate Condition. A gripping thriller that follows a woman convinced a sinister figure is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens—while the men in her life refuse to believe a word she says.
Anna Alcott is desperate to be pregnant. But as she tries to balance her increasingly public life with a grueling IVF journey, she starts to suspect that someone is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens. Crucial medicines are lost. Appointments get swapped without her knowledge. And even when she finally manages to get pregnant, not even her husband is willing to believe that someone’s playing a twisted game with her.
When the increasingly cryptic threats drive her out of her Brooklyn brownstone and into hiding in the cold, gray ghost town that is the Hamptons in the depths of winter, Anna is almost at the end of her rope.
Then her doctor tells her she’s had a miscarriage—except Anna’s convinced she’s still pregnant, despite everything the grave-faced men around her claim. Could it be that her mind is playing tricks on her? Or is something more sinister at play? As her symptoms become ever more horrifying and the sense of danger ever more present, Anna can’t help but wonder what exactly she’s carrying inside of her…and why no one will listen when she says something is horribly, painfully wrong.
Trigger Warning:
Hover for Trigger WarningsEdition:
Hardcover
My Thoughts:
I will start by fully copping to something: Rosemary’s Baby is one of my favorite movies, but I don’t want to buy it/rent it/watch it as long as Roman Polanski might still benefit financially from it. He is a garbage person who has done garbage things, and I refuse to support him financially, no matter how good a filmmaker I think he is. If you require that I do the fact-finding on his ickiness for you, here it is – an easy-to-digest timeline with minimal extraneous details.
As author Andrea Bartz is quoted on the cover, this is “the feminist update to Rosemary’s Baby we all needed.” And it truly is. Although there are some notable differences, I’d say Delicate Condition passes the Rosemary vibe check in a big way. Both heavily feature pregnant women being gaslit all to hell and back throughout very troubling pregnancies. They both have that sweet, sweet Satanic Panic flair. Both are about actresses conceiving desperately wanted babies. And both feature plot points dealing with someone/something just as desperately wanting that baby. Delicate Condition also features the same slow-burn pacing of Rosemary. It’s almost more about the journey than the destination, and I love that for both stories.
“I stumbled back into the bedroom, wondering if a woman has ever calmed down after a man told her to.”
But really, it’s not like they’re the same story – don’t make the mistake I did. I legit expected this to be just a modern retelling – it’s not. It is more of a spiritual sister to Rosemary. They’re both pregnancy horrors with elements of Satanic culty business and copious gaslighting, but that’s kind of where the similarities end as far as story elements. It’s more that it feels similar. Anna is the Fran to Rosemary‘s Barbara (that’s a Romero-verse reference).
Basically what I’m getting at is that Rosemary is much meeker than Fran on account of the times in which the movies happened (1968 vs 1978). In much the same way, Anna is a much more 2020s-appropriate protagonist than Rosemary would have been. Although she is, as mentioned, gaslit all the way around, she still has more agency and self-assuredness than sweet, gentle Rosemary. Although Rose still gets hella points for that spur-of-the-moment pixie cut. And apparently Delicate Condition is actually the basis for one of the newer American Horror Story seasons. So at least I know I’m not alone in liking it (jk, I have the internet – I knew).
“I was tired of pretending I wasn’t in pain. I was tired of being strong just because it made things easier for everyone else. I was tired of calming down.”
Anyway, you’re going to go into this thinking that you already know/understand what is going to happen over the course of Delicate Condition, but the fun part is that I think you’re probably wrong. It actually defied my expectations a solid handful of times. And in ways that I found genuinely pleasing.
Rating:
Maybe skip Delicate Condition if you’re in the middle of trying to conceive/pregnant/may become pregnant. If I wasn’t already pregnancy-averse, I probably would be now. Just throwing that out there for you to do with what you will. But know that it is really, really good.
Delicate Condition By Danielle Valentine Sourcebooks Landmark Published: August 1, 2023 ISBN: 9781728276885 Hardcover, Paperback, E-book, Audio 432 Pages
