'Oh, it's not so bad,' Melissa Green's mother says to her nonchalantly on the subject of having babies. 'The doctors will be there and they'll put you to sleep. I almost miscarried with you. The doctor wanted me to stay in bed, but I didn't and you were born just the same.' Melissa, on the verge of puberty, baffled by and anxious about certain bodily changes, is neither greatly enlightened nor particularly reassured by this information, but her mother, in the time-honoured patchwork mode of ellipses, imprecision and embarrassment, barrels on regardless with the lecture on birds and bees. The one thing Melissa is spared is euphemism.

LRB 18 July 1996 | PDF Download