Ben Elton is a famous British comedian, with several successful (and rather laddish) sitcoms to his writing credit. He was also one of a generation that took standup away from gag telling (blue collar) and story telling (white collar) towards standup-with-a-message. That message was usually left wing politics.
I read one of his other books many years ago and it was surprisingly well crafted.
This story, Inconceivable, however read like something rattled off in one draft when under a deadline for his agent. The 'humour' comes from the diary format, written by the two characters who are trying for a baby, and their different interpretations of events. It is pretty one dimensional however. And having two voices like this makes it hard to really introduce other characters.
The last quarter of the book though, gets a bit more interesting as some of the plot lines start to intersect. It probably wasn't worth getting there however, unless you are out for a simple, untaxing read on a plane.

The first and biggest thing that irritated me about this book, told through dual consecutive diary entries written by husband and wife, was the voice of Lucy. Obviously the wife. She was completely two-dimensional, flat as a caricature, with her depressing obsession about as luridly painted as a two dollar whore. Pretty much the only thing Lucy does is whinge on about wanting a baby, her entire point in life being having a baby, having wanted a baby since she was one herself, desiring nothing beyond the replacement of herself on this Earth. I'll admit that desire is pretty foreign to my character, hence the lack of sympathy; however, even if I was actively jonesing for a child, I still think I'd be sickened by the voice of this character. For GoD's sake (no irony intended here), there's more to life than just reproducing.

Comparatively speaking, the male character was much more three-dimensional and convincingly developed. This is what irritated me even more... the author was obviously capable of writing well-rounded characters (apparently). So why didn't he give Lucy the benefit of a proper character? I'm aware it was a satire, apparently about infertility, but it didn't feel very socially progressive to me. Or was it the point that they were completely obsessed with themselves, completely absorbed in their own apparently miserable lives, that they couldn't even once consider adoption to form their precious family unit?

Anyway, Elton almost redeemed himself when, in the course of the book, the main character (who's writing a screenplay based on the shared suffering of him and his wife) admits that he hasn't got the woman's voice developed and she is, indeed, a bit of a flat character. Ha! I thought. He's making fun of himself, and it IS the point that Lucy's flat as the proverbial horizon. Except, then, no, there's no further evidence that that's what was intended at all. In fact, it's after that point that Lucy finally manages to become a bit more three-dimensional. This isn't high literature, so I can't even convince myself that this was all part of Elton's plot to somehow manipulate us into believing that Lucy wasn't a real character until that point because Sam wasn't paying enough attention to her. You can't countenance that theory when the entire book is based on purely separate diary entries they've both been writing for the entirety of the novel. She's been a separate and ostensibly complete person for the entire sad parade.

There's also very little emotional impact to the story because you knew where it's going (both characters are boringly predictable) and they both pretty much deserved what happened to them. Of course, credit where credit's due: I respect the way in which Elton manipulated the two points of view to convincingly portray a couple's malfunction of communication. It was amusing to see how they both interpreted the other's words, especially when you did really know what the other person was thinking.

There's a maudlin cast to the last forty pages that viciously and ham-handedly grabs for the heart-strings. But it's too much too late, over-loading whatever sympathetic capabilities I possessed at that point and leading to a cruelly insensitive "meh" reaction on my part. The book ends as lackluster as it began, and I am definitely not impressed.

I should watch some Black Adder to restore my faith in Elton. Despite what the cover of the book proclaims (in regards to at least this book), Elton the novel-writer IS NOT funnier than Ben Elton the comic or script-writer.

Characters were insufferable for most of the book and many of the plot points were predictable, but I powered through because I had to know the ending which was actually the best part and quite satisfying.

Well kept log of a married couple who want a baby