This novel explores the quiet desperation of infertility through a young couple in post-World War I Australia. Tom and Isabel live alone on a remote lighthouse island. Isabel struggles deeply after miscarriages, her grief sharp and consuming.
When a baby is washed ashore in a boat, Isabel sees it as a miraculous answer to her sorrow. This event sets off unexpected moral questions, emotional heartbreak, and profound consequences.
Stedman beautifully captures how infertility can shape decisions and can challenge the very idea of right and wrong.
Atwood gives a powerful account of infertility taken to disturbing extremes. Set in the dystopian society of Gilead, declining fertility rates lead to women being stripped of their freedom. They exist as “handmaids,” forced into reproduction for the ruling class.
The protagonist, Offred, reveals a disturbing reality marked by fear, oppression, and survival. Atwood’s work paints infertility as a societal crisis capable of reshaping cultural norms, personal identities and entire systems of power.
Picoult deals compassionately with infertility, same-sex parenting, and challenging family dynamics. Zoe Baxter struggles for years to become pregnant, enduring heartbreak repeatedly. When her marriage collapses, she finds love again.
Seeking parenthood in a new relationship brings unexpected complications. Picoult’s exploration centers on modern reproductive medicine, music therapy, and the powerful yearning to nurture a child.
Through these interconnected issues, she highlights the emotional and social tensions that infertility can create.
In this engaging novel, Weiner interweaves fertility struggles through multiple women’s stories. Each character, influenced by infertility or the desire to have a child, grapples with complex realities like surrogacy, egg donation, and parenting.
With humor and empathy, Weiner shows the emotional depth of infertility, along with the surprising bonds and complicated emotions involved. Her approach reflects how parenthood dreams reshape identities, test relationships, and lead to unique definitions of family.
In a powerful dystopian vision, humanity has gone infertile, sending society into existential collapse. With no new births, the world steadily loses hope and descends into apathy.
Theo Faron, a historian observing civilization’s decline, finds hope again when encountering a shocking development—a pregnant woman. James portrays infertility as more than individual sadness; it becomes the root of global despair.
Through Theo, the novel reveals how deeply fertility and hope are intertwined within society’s foundation.
Set in 1920s Alaska, this tale follows a childless couple who leave their home to live in isolation in the harsh northern wilderness. Infertility has left them disheartened and disconnected, but then the mysterious appearance of a little girl in the forest changes their lives.
Blending fantasy and reality, Ivey explores how infertility creates longing and loneliness—and how, through miracles or imagination, parenthood remains an enduring emotional quest.
This story raises questions about faith, desire, and mortality through Gideon Mack, a Scottish minister who never expected to become a parent. Gideon’s complicated personal life, including infertility and marital issues, leads him into profound doubt and uncertainty.
Robertson uses infertility as one of the factors shaping Gideon’s spiritual journey, exploring how the absence of children can profoundly alter one’s sense of self, belief, and life’s meaning.
“Room” doesn’t address infertility directly, but parenthood and the powerful bond between mother and child form its emotional heart. The novel features Ma, who fiercely protects and loves her child, despite their terrible circumstances living captive in a tiny room.
Donoghue captures the fierce connection and nurturing instinct of parental love. Indirectly, the novel highlights the profound, complex emotions at stake when individuals desperately desire, or are forced into, the responsibilities of becoming a parent.
Green’s novel humorously yet honestly covers different stages and struggles of motherhood, fertility, and career pressures through the lives of three women.
Each character faces her own fertility anxieties, pregnancy challenges, or desires for motherhood, portraying their well-rounded emotional phases. Infertility specifically underscores the pressures women experience in defining themselves as mothers.
Green explores themes of changing personal identity, relationships, and the realities—both frustrating and fulfilling—of the modern parenthood journey.
In this relatable tale, Moriarty follows Emma’s often comedic but emotionally genuine desire to conceive. Emma tries every fertility approach available, enduring treatments and advice, heartbreaks and humorous missteps.
Through Emma’s honest and sometimes heartbreaking experiences, the story offers readers insight into the intense strain infertility places on partnership, self-worth, and hope. It highlights infertility’s emotional weight and its impact on self-image and intimate relationships.
In another dystopian setting, Rogers imagines a world where a deadly virus causes global infertility. Teenage Jessie Lamb faces a frightening future where the concept of family is lost and humanity yearns desperately for surviving offspring.
Jessie struggles ethically and emotionally when presented with a horrific yet knowable choice. Rogers explores infertility as a worldwide crisis that profoundly influences attitudes toward sacrifice, self-worth and the very meaning of future.
Set in biblical times, Diamant offers readers a vividly detailed narrative based on Dinah, daughter of Jacob. Fertility and infertility significantly shape the lives of Dinah’s female relatives.
These women’s experiences with pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood rule their daily joys, sadness, and destinies.
Diamant sensitively portrays infertility as both deeply personal and socially significant for each character—giving a historical perspective to how infertility can shape individual identities, family relationships, and cultural traditions.