Inconceivable: On the True Meaning of Family

Summary

“Moving, courageous, enlightening.”—Sunday Times bestselling author Elizabeth Day

Written with deep empathy and clear-eyed analysis reminiscent of Angela Garbes and Peggy Orstein, an exciting and thought-provoking debut memoir about fertility, the desire for parenthood, and family in all its forms.

“My family tree is not simple; my lineage is not linear. There are the branches we see and the roots we do not. Not all bloodlines flow with blood.”

When Rebecca Coxon entered her genetic data into an ancestry website in 2016, she unwittingly sparked a chain reaction of unravelling secrets that would redefine everything she thought she knew about identity and family.

Deeply honest and raw, Inconceivable is the chronicle of her extraordinary odyssey. Both a product and a patient of IVF—sperm donor-conceived and an egg donor herself—Coxon offers a unique perspective on how we choose to create new life and the consequences of those decisions. Hers is a moving portrait of how secrets can break and remake us and how love can transcend decades of stigma and shame.

Rebecca interweaves her own experiences with those of Marilyn Monroe and other famous figures including Frida Kahlo, Hilary Mantel, Lena Dunham and her biblical namesake, women whose lives and work were shaped in some way by infertility.

Written with nuance and tenderness, Inconceivable is a beautiful meditation on our place within history and the wider universe and, above all else, a love letter to family.