[Clive]
Another recommendation in the series. It’s the turn of Reihan Salam, journalist and co-proprietor of The American Scene, a site that surely needs no introduction in this neighbourhood:
First published in 1992, Walter Kirn’s "She Needed Me" should by all rights be very dated. It’s a gentle polemic (if that makes any sense) on America’s culture wars and a not-quite romance between a born-again Christian and a young unmarried woman heavy with child. They meet – where else? – at an abortion clinic, where the young man and his comrades are barricading the door. The young woman, at first glance as beautiful and tragic and neurotic as any boilerplate heroine, turns out to be a doughty survivor, more impressive in her own way than her swain. Weighty themes are addressed: religiously-inspired terror, the dissolution of the family, self-reliance. And I can’t say I endorse everything about the book: its conclusion suggests that the author feels rather differently about abortion than I do. (At the risk of giving too much away, you get the sense that abortion is the hardheaded, pragmatic, right choice.) All the same, the essential
decency and humaneness of this book, and its deeply flawed and in many ways quite stupid protagonist, shines through.
The Dish 