This was the fourth book I read in the Inheritance series, and the writing- with such urgency- had me hooked from the very beginning. But like the mother, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop...

Many thanks to NetGalley, Amazon Original Stories, and Julie Orringer for the opportunity to read and review this short story, another in the 5-part Inheritance series and another 5 star read. These books are short but so powerful.

Written in the 2nd person, this is the story of a mother being rushed to the hospital in an emergency to deliver her too-early baby. Her husband, Ky, takes her to the nearest hospital instead of the one where she is supposed to deliver. This hospital is where she was taken after her mother died which brings up so many emotions as well as the secret she is keeping from her husband.

You will definitely feel the emotions of this book - some are so relatable to all new mothers. Another highly recommended story in this series - can't wait to read the others.

Another great short story in the Inheritance collection. This one was written in the second person. A women is rushed to the hospital to deliver her first baby after being diagnosed with placenta previa. The same hospital her mother was brought to after she committed suicide when she was just a child.

It is hard to say too much without giving this short story away but I really enjoyed the writing style and having it written in second person. I was definitely felt the pain, fear, exhaustion and love while reading this short, right from page one until the end.

I give this a 4 out of 5 stars.

Can You Feel This is the story of a young mother-to-be who goes to the hospital to give birth to her first child after a scare with placenta previa. Unbeknownst to everyone else in her life, it's the same hospital where her mother was taken after committing suicide.

This story takes us through the anxiety of a new mother and a caesarean birth, but also flashes back to her time in the hospital as a seven year old after her mother committed suicide.

I enjoyed the story, but the second person point of view is off putting and kept me from connecting with the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley, Amazon, and the author for a free copy of this story. My review is voluntary.

Excellent short story. I am a labor & delivery nurse. The plot, the hospital setting, the medical terminology was spot on. The characters were so real, the author captured the feelings of a loving couple going through all the fear, uncertainty and joy that all new parents experience. The fact that the material grandmother commit suicide so many years ago just adds another great dimension to the story. Thank you so much for my advance copy. I have followed Julie Orringer for many years and have read all her fabulous books .

“Can You Feel This” is a mundane story about the anxieties of a new mother who, in childbirth, recalls a traumatic experience that she has hidden from her husband. Julie Orringer hints at the traumatic incident before it is revealed near the story’s end. Until then, the story’s focus is on childbirth, territory that has been explored in countless stories about the anxieties experienced by new mothers. Orringer does nothing new or special in this story’s examination of the fear of motherhood.

Emily is understandably freaked out about the bleeding that won’t stop. Recalling her doctor’s warnings, she fears losing her baby. As her husband Ky drives her across a bridge to Manhattan, she’s also freaked out because she sees a different bridge where her mother died 28 years earlier. Apparently, Emily has never become acclimated to traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan via a bridge.

Against her wishes, Ky takes her to the hospital where she saw her mother’s dead body. Emily feels very alone because she has no living parents, notwithstanding the presence of a patient husband who drove her to the hospital and stayed in her room during her C-section, as well as three friends who visit during her brief hospital stay. Emily is a bit fragile.

Doctors stick Emily with needles and repeatedly ask “Can you feel this?” Hence the title, which presumably also refers to all the other things the protagonist does or doesn’t feel. How very literary.

Since it happens quite early, it isn’t a spoiler to report that the baby is delivered alive and that he smells like wildflowers. Alyssum, in particular. Orringer goes on about new-baby scent for just a few sentences, but that’s a few sentences too long for my taste.

The bulk of the story explores Emily’s endless stream of anxieties: her reluctance to enter a state of motherhood because of her unhappy experience with her unstable mother; her attempts to figure out how to operate her newborn. Neither her husband (who stays dutifully in the background) nor her supportive visitors lessen her self-absorbed anguish. Why Emily insists on feeling sorry for herself in the midst of all this love and attention is a bit of a mystery. Emily seems to think she needs her long-dead mother to tell her how to raise a baby, a task that women have been doing forever, despite getting advice and instruction, not to mention helpful pamphlets, from hospital staff. If she needs coaching, she can also turn to another visitor, a “powerful” West Coast neuroscientist who is the mother of three children and one of Emily’s long-time friends. So why all the fuss?

The story works its way to a denouement after Emily leaves the hospital and must again confront a scary bridge, (presumably) symbolic of a bridge between pre-mommy life and her new-mommy status. In second-person prose that is (presumably) meant to connect the reader more closely to Emily, we learn the source of her life-shaping trauma. I rejected the traumatic moment as ridiculously manipulative and, in any event, I had little sympathy for Emily’s three-decade long refusal to confront her past. Nor was I moved by the suggestion that childbirth will finally give Emily reason to change.

Orringer’s prose is fluid. Emily is the only character who is given even the slightest substance (all that can be said of her husband is that he seems like a nice guy), although it isn’t unusual to shortchange secondary characters in short fiction. I found no offsetting virtues to overcome my dislike of a contrived motherhood story about an annoyingly fragile character. Readers who enjoy obvious emotional manipulation or, for that matter, stories about anxious new mommies will likely have a very different reaction.

NOT RECOMMENDED

A different kind of story that will pull all of your emotions. Julie Orringer's short story of a mother's feeling during and after a difficult birth is one you'll think about for awhile. Short read, about an hour for me.

I wanted to DNF this book eventho it was a short story 😂 I didn't enjoy this story because I got distracted from the way it was written.

I received this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This was a beautiful short story of a mother who struggles during giving birth to her baby. The emotions that flow inside her is very well weaved into words. The protagonist gives birth in the same hospital her mother died when she was seven years old. In between this, she can't help but remembers her mother and what could have been if she were alive.

She goes back and forth between the present and the past. And then, finally decides to share her past which she has kept inside for so long.

I loved how the arrival of the baby changed so much inside the mother. It is very beautifully portayed the struggles of a mother after giving birth. I thoroughly enjoyed the story.

Can You Feel This? is the third one I have read in the Amazon Original Short Stories Inheritance Collection. This story is narrated in the second person and at first, it felt a bit odd. I then started to get into the flow and found it an interesting and harrowing way to tell the story. I felt like I became part of the story as I was put in the shoes of the characters here. This one didn't leave me thinking as much but Yes!!! I could feel it and the anxieties the character was feeling.

This is a short Amazon published story which I really enjoyed. I found it quite powerful and engaging. Very well written.

If you like short stories then this would be recommended. I see that there are other sort Amazon publications and I will definitely look for them as I enjoyed this one.

A recommended read.

Thank you Amazon and NetGalley.

Another short story from the Inheritance collection. I have never read this author so these short stories are a great way to explore new authors.

This new mother has a lot on her mind when she goes into labor prematurely. This is their first child and they thought they had everything planned out, the perfect hospital, how they wanted to deliver, etc. I have some personal insight into this because my daughter had also planned to deliver “her way” with a midwife,at a birthing center. However her baby’s heart rate began to get too high and he was premature so she had to go to the hospital and have a C-section performed by a doctor she didn’t know. All turned out fine.

So I know that reality often gets in the way of the best laid plans. When this new mother, suffering from placenta previa, starts to bleed heavily, her partner, Ky, is forced to race her to the nearest hospital. This hospital, however, holds dark feelings and thoughts for the new mother. It is where her mentally unbalanced mother was rushed after she committed suicide. This is the one hospital where she did not want to deliver.

So many thoughts and feelings are written into this short story. The writing is smooth and easy to read and the story rushes by. Any mother will understand the feelings of worry that go through every woman’s head when she is in labor, will the baby be all right? Will I be able to be a good mother? These questions are compounded for this mother because she did not have a mother who took good care of her, she feels she lacks a role model and fears she won’t know what to do. She worries that she may inherit her mother’s illness or pass it on to her baby.

We’re taken along on this quick but harrowing ride through the delivery of the baby.

I enjoyed this story and the author’s writing style and will definitely be looking for her next book.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this short story.

Another great short story from the Amazon Inheritence Collection. A women expecting her first child suddenly finds herself having an emergency caesarian four weeks before her baby is due. Bleeding heavily she is taken, not to the hospital where she had booked her delivery, but to the hospital, where as a young child, her mentally disturbed mother died from a traumatic suicide. As she recovers from surgery and tries to care for her baby she reflects on her relationship with her mother and whether she herself will be able to be a good mother to her child. A thought-provoking story that will resonate with many mothers.

I have just finished reading an “Amazon Original Stories” by Julie Orringer.

“ Can You Feel This” is a quick little read. A woman is rushed into hospital for an emergency caesarean. She is in the same hospital where her mother was taken when she committed suicide just a few years earlier.

An interesting and well written few words of fiction.

Thank you to the author, publisher for my early copy to read, for my honest review

#CanYouFeelThis #NetGalley

Becoming a new mother can be daunting especially when memories of one’s own mother are anything but positive. An interesting look at the transition from being childless to having one’s first baby. What I didn’t care for in this story was the depiction of the lactation consultant. She is seen as a cold, hurried rough individual and that is not my experience or knowledge of them.
I have never read any of the author’s previous books, but was impressed by her writing style and will definitely seek them out!

This will resonate with a lot of women, as it's about becoming a new mother, about the experience of being in a hospital after having a traumatic C-section, having this new person you're supposed to instantly connect with, know how to feed them and just keep them alive, while you're recovering from abdominal surgery and missing your own mother and father, both deceased.

I enjoyed Orringer second-person narration, there was a rawness to it and it gave the story both an authentic feel while also feeling like an out-of-body experience. This brought back memories.

CAN YOU FEEL THIS?
BY JULIE ORRINGER

This was my second story that I have read in the Amazon Series and every bit as excellent as the first one. This one was written by the talented Julie Orringer who wrote a powerful yet harrowing story that is universal I imagine every woman who has given birth can relate to. I know that it reminded me of my first time giving birth. In this story the un-named woman is nervous and scared and unsure if it is time to rush to the hospital. Certainly the amount of blood loss was cause for concern even though it is early. It is an emergency and the woman and her partner Ky don't dare spare the time to get her to the hospital she was supposed to deliver her baby to. There is an urgency felt by the reader as if one is living and experiencing what we are reading as if it is also us giving birth for the first time and feeling as though we are plunged into the images of the words on the page. This is how powerful Julie Orringer has penned this explosive burst of emotions.

At the same time Ky, her partner scurries around beside her she is having flashes of the past of her mother. Different scenes play in her mind of her and her mother at different times of their lives when this woman was small and we feel her helplessness. This is the same hospital where this woman last saw her mother. I could feel the staccato bursts of feelings of one of the most powerful moments of this womans life right beside being swept from not knowing what to do to being told by the birthing team what to do next. I really loved this short story and I will not forget it. Ever. I think every woman who has ever given birth for the first time can pick something of this story and remember the joy and the frightening moments and relate and be taken back in time to their own unique experience.. I am amazed at how well written and excellent this series is.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher providing me with my ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

This is one of five short stories published as the Amazon Original Stories Inheritance Collection. It is the third one I have read and I will now definitely have to go back for the other two!

I have not read anything by this author before but now I will. She writes beautifully and this story is so very evocative of the events of child birth. It is not possible to say much more without spoiling the story.

Very enjoyable and very well worth reading.

Another fantastic short story from the Amazon Original Short Stories Inheritance Collection! This is the second
one I've read and it is very good! I must purchase this book of short stories to have them all together.

Thank you so much to all the writers, the Publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and
review this short story!

A young woman, thirty-six weeks along in her pregnancy, is counting the days until her scheduled C-section date. She knows the signs to watch for, and if need be, what to do in case of bleeding. Go to the closest emergency room.

Stressed, anxious, worried by the time they arrive at the closest ER when she experiences bleeding; another layer of distress is added to her mounting concerns. It is the hospital where they took her as a child the day her mother died, a day that still haunts her.

A nicely balanced short story that had me feeling it all, the fears, the sorrows, the physical and emotional exhaustion. The overwhelming nature of it all - the questions, comparisons of our experiences, concerns over our ability to provide the right environment, to care for this helpless being, along with all of our hopes and dreams for their future.



Pub Date: 19 Dec 2019


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Amazon Original Stories and NetGalley