The Flaw of Love

It’s a Saturday morning in Brooklyn. Joel Miller, age twenty-eight, stands outside his locked bathroom door. Behind it are his girlfriend Lisa, a Dixie cup, and a pregnancy test. While she stalls for time, Miller is left in his hallway to wonder and wait: for the results of the test, for the pieces of his addled life to come together, for some kind of divine intervention to guide his actions when Lisa finally emerges.

Thus begins Lauren Grodstein’s beguiling debut novel, a wise, wonderfully assured journey deep into the heart of the commitmentphobic male. Awaiting test results that could determine his future, Miller finds himself replaying all he has seen of love so far. There was his father Stan’s awkward balancing act between doting father and failed husband, and his mother Bay’s refusal to accept that Stan was never coming back. There was his playboy friend Grant’s devastation upon falling for the one woman he couldn’t have. And most of all, there was Miller’s own prior relationship—with Blair, the aloof beauty he can’t stop thinking about, the one who got away. With past and present colliding in his hallway, Miller begins to realize just how little he really knows about intimacy, love and potential fatherhood—and more important, about what he’s going to do next.

Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love fearlessly charts the romantic odyssey of one endearing New York bachelor, and in so doing illuminates some universal truths about family, loyalty, devotion, and love.

Previously published as Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love