SOURCE: A review of Letter to a Child Never Born, in America, Vol. 136, No. 12, March 26, 1977, p. 279.

In the following review, Stahel discusses the plot outline and the ideas raised in Fallaci's novel Letter to a Child Never Born.

Imagine the embarrassment of an Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, who, because she has written a novel that certain Catholics approve, now finds that her liberal credentials have grown suspect. In one effort to rehabilitate herself (and to sell her book), she appeared on the "Today" show recently and assured Tom Brokaw that she, like other "civilized people," was politically for abortion. When Mr. Brokaw assayed the touchy question as to whether this short novel were autobiographical, Miss Fallaci, who is unmarried, answered: I am a woman, with a womb, who was pregnant, who lost her child; but the novel is a construction. It uses the author's experiences and ideas, but...