I read Cronin’s latest novel to satisfy my curiosity over the buzz its publication generated. Surprisingly, there were moments of beautiful prose. In this section, Mausami reflected on her pregnancy (in The Passage):

A baby wasn’t an idea, as love was an idea. A baby was a fact. It was a being with a mind and a nature, and you could feel about it any way you liked, but a baby wouldn’t care. Just by existing, it demanded that you believe in a future: the future it would crawl in, walk in, live in. A baby was a piece of time; it was a promise you made that the world made back to you. A baby was the oldest deal there was, to go on living.