Mother of Invention by Caeli Wolfson Widger: book review

Mother of Invention (2018) is set in Silicon Valley, America, in the future.

Wealthy forty-four-year-old executive Tessa Callahan, founder of Loop Industries, is monitoring the innovative Seahorse Solution project, a procedure that accelerates human pregnancy from nine months to nine weeks. Shorter pregnancies empowers women in the workforce is the Seahorse Solution mantra. Tessa’s personal beliefs include: don’t be a pleaser; embrace unlikability; practice confrontation.

Tessa’s husband Peter Grandwein is a minimalist, a rock-climbing and swimming coach, and a qualified nutritionist. He wants to be a full-time father, but Tessa thinks she is ‘way past peak fertility’ and has an aversion to childbearing. She develops the concept of accelerated pregancies, but she is not a scientist. Luke Zimmerman designed the medical miracle and was invested in its success.

Two years later, in 2021, Tessa is supervising the testing phase, Cohort One – the first three pregnant volunteers in the residential suite: Kate Lavek, LaTonya Sims, and the oldest, forty-seven-year-old Gwen Harris. Tessa will be living with Cohort One throughout the nine week trial.

The novel describes the personalities and pyschologies of the three volunteers. How will they cope with the process? What happens to the body during accelerated gestation (AG), and afterwards? And what of the accelerated babies – are they, you know, normal? Who are the unlucky ones? What are the ethics in changing the natural course of pregnancy?

The Trial brings to light many truths about the past and the present that will have lasting impacts in the future. Mistakes have consequences.

This is interesting futuristic science fiction novel in which there are endless possibilities, and endless discussions about science and medical ethics. Fear vs faith. Alarmists vs innovators. Secrets vs sacrifice. There’s more than mothers and babies in this creepy, speculative, fast-track tale.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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