Inconceivable

Ben Elton's style has been got under a bit of control since the heady early days of Stark. He still takes the occasional potshot at incidental targets, but he no longer fires a scattergun in every direction as he did then. As often, he picks a topic that might seem to call for the utmost delicacy and tact and treats it with the utmost frankness and even ribaldry. The topic in question is human infertility, although there is a very entertainingly-handled sub-plot of life within the BBC in addition. His style of comedy has always been to highlight the grotesque side of things, and so it remains here. This doesn't show any lack of human sympathy on his part - indeed very much the reverse I should say - but he is not for the shy or the oversensitive much less for the solemn or the pompous. The processes of human sexuality verge on the absurd at the best of times whatever else can be said about them. When we factor in the exceptional manoeuvres increasingly demanded by a desperate mid-30's childless wife from her less committed husband, culminating in the lurid rituals of IVF, I think it's fair to say that it takes a certain type of writer to deal with such a theme successfully. Ben Elton handles it brilliantly. We are not spared the most graphic or intimate physical and anatomical details, but the comic style Elton adopts really masks a true delicacy of perception. Indeed I'm inclined to say that nobody with less of a sense of humour than the two protagonists show in this book would have been able to see the whole gruesome process through. The humour is very English humour, and I think I know what it's modelled on to a great extent. During the years of the Thatcher Terror, there used to be a hilarious column in the magazine Private Eye purporting to consist of letters from her husband to a friend named Bill. These were written in a very public-school idiom, probably derived basically from P G Wodehouse but influenced by minor literature such as the Molesworth books, familiar also from Oxford common-rooms and similar places of association, and updated more recently into the dialogue of the chattering classes in Islington and similar parts of London, the form in which we find it here. This idiom can take the heaviness out of the most serious situations without trivialising them, and whether or not I'm right about its precise origin in this book that is the way its author tries to use it, and tries very successfully in my own opinion. The author never speaks to us directly throughout the whole book, using instead the device of diaries written by the husband and wife, much as is done in Julian Barnes's Talking it Over. The device works very well here. Ben Elton is an observer and critic with a particularly acute eye for human behaviour and attitudes, and it helps if he steps back a little from the narrative for that very reason. The incidents in the story are often Rabelaisian and hilarious, but the dilemmas and worse that the characters face are touch

This is the first book I've read by Ben Elton, and I don't think it will be the last. It was a truly wonderful book particularly focusing on both sides of the infertility issue. I found it to be a very accurate portrayal, and it touched a nerve, as I am currently trying to start my own family. So I can definitely relate. Even so, I know that I would have enjoyed the book even if I didn't know any better.Although the issue of infertility can be stressful for couples, he puts it into a funny, and yet very realistic spin. And I far more enjoyed reading Sam's narrative of events as opposed to Lucy's. I realize that it's a burdensome situation for both of them, yet I think that Lucy's character could have been written with maybe a little more sympathy. I found it hard to like her (my only complaint).At first, I had to become accustomed to the writing style of the book. It's written as two diaries put together, almost like a 'he said', she said scenario. Truthfully, I wasn't pleased when I learned of that, but as time went on, I slowly lost focus of that and instead found myself eager to see the very polar opposite reactions to the same situations exemplified from both Sam and Lucy.

Great book. I liked Popcorn, but I loved Inconceivable. The book works as we gain insight into the minds of a married copuple through their hysterical thoughts on a subject as potentially powerful as having a baby together. What a comedy setup. And Elton's writing is terrific. Funny almost always, but here and there some sad and serious parts (but not too many!).

I'm glad I've read this book before watching the movie ("Maybe Baby"), otherwise I would have left it unread. Ben Elton is obviously a better writer than a director and I wished he had played Sam's role himself. I've seen him describing his sperm test in his comedy show on the BBC. Very, very funny ... and so is the book. And of course, if you did like the movie, you'll enjoy the book even more.