Genesis Johnson, the narrator of the emotionally searing debut novel from Chico writer Bonnie Pipkin, will grab readers and not let them go. Johnson is almost eighteen, a student at Point Shelley High in New Jersey, and she is pregnant. Her boyfriend, Peter Sage, has driven her to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Manhattan for an abortion, a choice, she feels, both of them have made together. But once it's over, Peter is gone.
"I found out by walking into the waiting room, scanning a sea of hopeful eyes, and finding absolutely nowhere safe or familiar to land. In that moment, I was thrown into the deep, deep water. And in the deep, deep water, there is no way to breathe. Yet somehow, something propels you forward. Survival mode, I think it’s called."
"Aftercare Instructions" ($10.99 in paperback from Flatiron Books; also for Amazon Kindle) takes its chapter titles from the materials Genesis is given, including "Monitor Bleeding," "Recovery Times May Vary," and "You May Experience a Wide Range of Emotions." Each chapter ends with scenes from a play that provide the back story, how Genesis comes to connect with Peter, a conservative Christian, son of a prominent prolife mother.
Genesis' family? She cares now for her mentally unstable mother; her playwright father killed himself through a drug overdose (though her relatives will not admit it) and rumors abound at the high school.
As the novel charts the course of the most significant week in Genesis' life, she feels she is in someone else's play.
She confronts Peter. "This is the moment where the whole stage is dark and a weak spotlight focuses on these two people who fell in love with each other, who made promises to each other, who don't know which direction to turn, who lost the last pages of their scripts and have to improvise now."
Wither their relationship? Matters are complicated after Genesis' chance encounter at a party with an attractive young actor named Seth who invites her to an off-Broadway audition. Just whose play is she in, anyway?
"There's so much that will hurt us," Genesis recognizes. "It's how we take care of ourselves afterward that matters. The aftercare."
