An Innocent, a Broad
by Ann Leary

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Book Reviews of An Innocent, a Broad

Book Review: An Absolute Delight --- From Start to Finish
Summary: 5 Stars

After much hysteria and a cab ride, Ann and Denis find themselves in London's University College Hospital. She is put to bed in the hope that the delivery will be delayed as long as possible. Ann, who moved frequently as a child, sometimes feels like an awkward newcomer. In a roomful of British mums, she truly is out of her element. When asked if she is ready for tea, for example, she refuses while admitting she's hungry. She's concerned about caffeine and hasn't yet caught on to the fact that "tea" is actually a meal.

Ann makes friends eventually with the hospital staff and the other mothers, who help sustain her and Denis during the long ordeal after Jack is born. When Denis must return to New York to work, Ann stays nearby spending most of her time in the Special Care Baby Unit. She describes her admiration of the nursing staff: "If, for example, you haltingly inform a nurse that you have just passed what appeared to be a large part of your brain into the toilet, via the birth canal, the nurse will not gag but instead will admonish you for flushing it away before showing it to her." Yet, she admits feeling jealous and redundant in the face of their efficiency with her baby.

Ann, who went to England for a weekend and stayed for five-and-a-half months, felt frequently unprepared. Luckily, for her and her readers, one thing she didn't forget to bring was her sense of humor. As she tells her story, flashbacks to previous situations in her life point to the fact that, while she gives tragedy its due, she can often find life's inherent entertainment value.

From the first page, I felt that I had settled into the wry musing of a self-deprecatingly hilarious friend. Despite my frequent bouts of laughing, I also found myself moved, occasionally to tears. A sympathetic physical pang squeezes my heart when Ann speaks of staring into Jack's isolette and willing him to "Breathe, digest, grow." Sometimes laughter and tears come simultaneously, as in the epilogue, in which 13-year-old Jack, now tall and healthy, sees a photo of himself in an incubator with his mom at his side and is aghast --- at her haircut!

AN INNOCENT, A BROAD is witty, smart, terrifying, funny, heart-rending and heartwarming --- an absolute delight, from start to finish.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

Summary of An Innocent, a Broad

Ann Leary's hilarious, poignant, surprising, and heartfelt memoir, An Innocent, a Broad, is a phenomenon -- a fascinating, hugely entertaining chronicle of two simultaneous, unexpected births: of a baby and a major show-business career.

When Ann and her husband, then unknown actor-comedian Denis Leary, flew to London in the early nineties, neither anticipated the adventure that was in store for them. Ann, in her second trimester of pregnancy, looked forward to a carefree mini-vacation in England before the onset of motherhood. Denis saw his upcoming appearance on a BBC comedy program as the opportunity he needed to rocket his career forward. Although they had packed for only two nights, it would be five long months before they would be able to return to the United States.

Ann's premature labor began the morning after the couple arrived in London and she suddenly found herself an unwitting yet grateful hostage of Britain's National Health Service -- a stranger in a strange land, abruptly plunged into a world of breast pumps and midwives, blood oxygen levels, mad cow disease, and poll-tax riots. Desperately worried about the health of their tiny, prematurely born son, Jack, Ann struggled to adapt to motherhood and make sense of a very different culture while, simultaneously, Denis found himself an overnight sensation on London's comedy scene.

At once an intimate family memoir, a lively travelogue, a touching love story, an inside look at the entertainment industry, and a side-splitting comedy of errors, Ann Leary's An Innocent, a Broad is an utterly engaging and unforgettable look at the bizarre twists and hairpin turns one can encounter on the road of life -- whether that road winds through a familiar neighborhood or a frustratingly foreign land.

Despite the doctors' best efforts, baby Jack is born two weeks later, while Denis is back in the U.S. working at comedy clubs (and trying to keep the couple from being evicted from their apartment). Jack is in relatively good shape, but Ann's mental state is at risk, as sleep deprivation, anxiety, and loneliness get the best of her. Among her postpartum goofs is befriending another woman whose baby is also in intensive care; she mistakes her for a slim, serene Earth Mother instead of the heroin-addict she really is. So, An Innocent, A Broad is not so much a drama of Jack's survival as much as it is a chuckle-fest at the expense of both Ann's predicament and of the Brits in general, whose overwrought sense of propriety is mocked non-stop. Beware if you think this might seem a perfect gift for a pregnant woman; the belly laughs are constant and likely to cause any expectant woman's water to break. --Erica Jorgensen

Women Books

• Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Women
• Humor & Entertainment > Humor
• Health, Fitness & Dieting > Personal Health > Women's Health > Pregnancy & Childbirth