Julia Leigh is a fiction writer known for her brilliant, spare prose and eye for detail. Avalanche is a memoir documenting her experience of trying to become pregnant through IVF. Leigh’s opening sentence is a beauty: ‘For a great many nights I injected myself with an artificial hormone produced in a line of genetically modified Chinese hamster ovary cells.’

From here she tells a story common to many women – one in which a combination of finding a partner later in life, indecision about motherhood, and concern about being able to balance career and parenting led her to seek IVF treatment at the age of 38. She was told her chances of conceiving were not high, yet the more roadblocks to motherhood were put in her way, the more her desire for a child increased.

Leigh writes bluntly about her experience, and portrays a period of about four years in her life. Her relationship with her husband, Paul, goes from joyful to explosively hostile, and when the relationship ends Leigh must decide whether to pursue IVF treatment as a single woman. The microcosm of her life that we are invited into also includes close relationships with her sisters and nieces. In the interactions with her young nieces we are permitted to see the love and joy they mutually experience, as well as the desire and sadness provoked in Leigh as she wishes for her own child.

Leigh covers much territory in this compulsively readable but slim book. She writes honestly of the IVF ‘industry’, and her experience of the staff within it. She documents the high costs of her treatment and medications, and how she is able to pay for these. There are many ‘love stories’ in this memoir, but the greatest one is Leigh’s love for her imagined child, and the sacrifices and regimens she is prepared to undergo to attempt to bring this work of imagination to life. This is an honest and gritty book, and a riveting read.

Annie Condon