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Reviews
Mortal Fear (1994)
Book much much better
I finished the book last night. It was tremendous. I have seen the movie. It is totally different. In the book, set in rural Vermont, married doctor's Angela and David, with their sick daughter Nikki, find themselves ostracized from the community, their colleagues, the hospital that employs them after discovering that something is killing patients in the hospital. It does involve the insurance company etc. I find it odd that not one of the movie's characters shares a name with the book's characters. Read the book, steer clear of the movie. Joanna Kerns is at her telemovie best of course, the supporting cast show enough life to make it believable, though I am not sure hysterics were in the correct places.
Simone de Beauvoir's Babies (1997)
Biological time bombs
After a 20-year school reunion, a group of women, now in their late thirties, meet to reconsider where the last twenty years have left them. As teenagers in the 70's they were from relatively affluent backgrounds, well educated and well equipped to control their own fertility. All had high expectations about the perfect partner - he would be both soul mate and friend. But reality had fallen short of their expectations and now they find themselves without partners, without children, sitting on biological time bombs.
It's Karla, still the ringleader, who hatches the plan. Why not have babies anyway? If they haven't got partners, so what? Who needs men once the deed is done? The others are incredulous. Karla reminds them of their old bravado - that dimly remembered, wild, all conquering feeling. They could make a pact and procreate en-masse. One by one the others are seduced by the idea. All except Dianne.
Louise comes to realise that her affairs with married men are taking her nowhere and a brief flirtation with introduction agencies only depresses her. Maybe if she had a baby she'd have something of her own to love. Of course she would have to totally reorganise her hectic career, which doesn't allow time for a life, let alone a baby.
Sue goes into the scheme in the same way that she has launched into most other ventures - completely irrationally. She compares their lives to that of Simone de Beauvoir, the French writer who had been faithful to her feminist principals and her man, but ended up with only her principals. These could be the babies that Simone de Beauvoir never had.
Dianne is the only one that Karla fails to convince. She knows a baby is not what she needs to make her happy and she lashes out at the others for their questionable motives.
Throughout it all we follow the rocky and imperfect execution of their plan through miscarriages, rekindled flames and unexpected romances.