The Choice Format: Trade Paperback

Orsola is 34, lives in Rome with her husband, two young children, a big dog, and what seems like a perfect life. Raised by strict feminist and communist parents, her greatest dream has always been motherhood. After two joyful pregnancies, she decides to try for a third. But at the crucial 12-week scan, everything changes: a severe fetal anomaly is discovered, with possible outcomes being miscarriage or death shortly after birth. What follows is a harrowing journey through Italy?s healthcare system, where abortion is legal but nearly inaccessible ? blocked by conscientious objectors, outdated facilities, and a deafening lack of support. As Orsola and her husband Marco face grief and impossible choices, she also mourns the recent loss of her father, a warm, eccentric communist doctor from Calabria. His absence is felt deeply. This true story is both intimate and political ? a powerful, urgent indictment of a society that punishes women for choosing, suffering, and surviving.

Born in Rome in 1981 to a French mother and an Italian father, Orsola Severini has a BA in Contemporary History and an MA in Linguistics from the Sorbonne University. In addition to teaching French, she writes for the online newspaper Globalist. She made her debut in 2021 with the autobiographical novel Il Consolo. In 2023, she published the short story ?Yesterday? in the women?s anthology Arripizzari. Her latest novel, La quarta compagna (2024), explores the role of women in the Italian Resistance. Veronica Frigeni received her PhD in Italian from the University of Kent in 2018. She has held research positions at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Central European University, the University of Cambridge, and the Centre for Feminist Research at York University. Her work focuses on Italian literature, feminism, and reproductive justice, and she has published over 30 chapters and articles in these fields. Veronica is the Italian translator of Maternità femministe by Andrea O?Reilly (Prospero, 2025) and currently serves on the editorial board of the Critical Gender Studies Journal.nks so much