-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A lapidary memoir of losing a child before she can be born, which the author began writing the day she came home from the hospital—an intimate story about our most searing losses and brightest hopes.
"Some days I still think this is all just a sad story I'll tell Simone one day."
Lauren Christensen is a thirtysomething editor in New York City when she meets her future husband, Gabe, a writer with whom she falls in love right away. Her beloved grandfather is dying, but the young couple is bringing new life into the family: Lauren and Gabe joyfully discover she is pregnant with their daughter, Simone.
As Lauren faces the prospect of becoming a parent, she learns to let go of the fear of abandonment and need for control instilled in her by growing up with a largely absent father and a high-powered mother who was often away on business. Lauren and Gabe are incandescently happy in their exuberant, messy, beautiful shared world. But just weeks after their wedding, they learn that their worst nightmare has come true: Simone is dying in the womb.
In fierce, tender, spellbinding prose, Firstborn brings us to the very heart of the human paradox: How do we live when everyone who makes up our world will someday be gone? And how can we mourn when the cosmic order has been turned upside down—when a child dies before she is born?
As she comes up against the brutal limits of maternal healthcare and the limitlessness of her love for her daughter, Lauren Christensen finds a key, generous and brave, in which to share her loss, a testimony whose diamond-like brilliance refracts a universal light.
"With admirable candor, Christensen mines the complexities of life, grief, and family through the prism of her own devastation. It's a stunning achievement." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"In a delicately interwoven style...Firstborn movingly limns grief in its bewilderment and universality...An important record of a loss longing to be told...Christensen has created art that will undoubtedly offer comfort to others." —Booklist
"Firstborn is the story of a loss so deep and acutely observed it left me winded. Like all stories of grief, it is a record of love, fierce and carefully tended. That love is profound; it suffuses every page of this beautiful, devastating book." —Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies, one of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2021
"Firstborn is a tender and unflinching exploration of the complexities of grief and motherhood—and of the tragedy of living in bodies that are always more vulnerable than we think they are. Lauren Christensen offers a powerfully intimate perspective on navigating some of life's most difficult moments, one that will surely bring comfort and recognition to many readers." —Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness
This information about Firstborn was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lauren Christensen is an editor at The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
If you liked Firstborn, try these:
by Erika J.. Simpson
Published 2026
From "a writer who's absolutely going places" (Roxane Gay), a remarkable, inventive debut memoir about a mother-daughter relationship across cycles of poverty, separation, and illness, exploring how we forge identity in the face of imminent loss.
by Rufi Thorpe
Published 2025
A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman's attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.
After the Funeral and Other Stories
by Tessa Hadley
Published 2024
A masterful collection of stories that plumb the depths of everyday life to reveal the shifting tides and hidden undercurrents of ordinary relationships.
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
