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The Bright Side of Disaster,by Katherine Center, published by Ballantine Books, 2008

Opening the cover of The Bright Side of Disaster, by Katherine Center is like answering a phone call from your best friend; you don’t necessarily intend to spend half the night gabbing, but the more you hear, the harder it is to hang up.

Enter Jenny, engaged to Mr. No-Where-Near-Wonderful, and unexpectedly pregnant.   She is exuberant about her pregnancy — following all the “rules” and going so organically natural that any epidural junkie out there will be left chuckling and shaking her head.   Unfortunately, her fiance is starting to panic and leaves her one night on a cigarette run and never comes back.     So the girl who almost settled for a mediocre (at best) guy finds herself wading the trenches of single motherhood with a brand new sleepless and hungry baby girl.

One of my favorite parts of the novel was Jenny’s experience giving birth.   It is a hysterical comedy of errors, and I couldn’t help but be reminded that no birthing plan is complete without the clause, “This entire memo may be declared null and void by the jerk-OB on call…”   But it is the tender, even heartbreaking, accounts of Jenny’s first few days trying to nurse, trying to forge on ahead and trying to find time to sleep that really captures the heart of any reader that’s had a baby of their own.   I almost felt blurry-eyed myself remembering those nights of nursing every two hours, changing diapers in the dark, eating anything I could reach with one hand and answering the door forgetting that my shirt was still unbuttoned, nursing bra flapping in the breeze…

It turns out that Jenny doesn’t have to survive completely on her own: her feisty Texas Mama, new friends from her mommy group and a friendship with a handsome handyman neighbor pull her through with a series of antics and advice that make you laugh out loud.   And just when you think you you’ve got the ending all figured out, Jenny’s precarious contentment gets a blindsiding.

Center writes a cast of characters that are honest and real; they are people you know, you relate to and you believe in.   You find yourself rooting for the good guys and cringing over the bad.   The quirks and plot twists are slices of real life that you don’t find in most novels of this genre.   (And when I say “genre,” I mean that though this book has been categorized as “chick-lit” and “mommy-lit” I get the feeling that  this one  has the power to cross that border and appeal to a much wider audience.)  Katherine Center has more than her fair share of talent up her sleeve, and  The Bright Side of Disaster will leave you charmed and wishing there were just a few more chapters to this engaging tale.