No clear winners among "The Baby Lottery's" five women

This terrific new first novel by Bellingham author (and Western Washington University associate professor) Kathryn Trueblood reads like a collection of interwoven short stories.

Told from the viewpoints of five college friends, now nearing 40, the book is ill served by its title: It isn't anything as frivolous as a baby lottery, but instead is a serious examination of five women's choices (or lack of choices) about childbearing. And while the tone can be very, very funny on occasion, "The Baby Lottery" takes aim at such heavy issues as abortion, infertility and the difficulties of coping with the conflicting and consuming demands of work, motherhood and marriage.

All five of the novel's women are, to a degree, exhausted and overwhelmed, though they've found strategies for coping with life. Charlotte's is alcohol; in the second trimester of her first pregnancy, her damaged and controlling husband demands that she seek an abortion. This outrages Jean, a former social worker desperate for a baby (after years of trying to conceive, she and her husband have divorced, and he now has had a child with his new wife).

Then there is Virginia, whose marriage to Finley is unraveling after his fiscal fecklessness loses their house and savings; Virginia's college-lecturer job means there's never enough time with their little son. Nan, an obstetric nurse, is trying to cope with her high-stress job and also with the strong-minded teen daughter she did not abort — against all advice — shortly after college graduation. And Tasi, a writer for a PR firm, is childless and single by choice, or so she tells herself.

Two of the chapters are anomalous: one from the only male point of view, that of the well-meaning Finley, and a harrowing first-person meditation from Charlotte, who has given up any attempts at taking control of her life and tries instead to deal with her guilty conscience and her cruel, remote husband.

Once you get the who's who figured out (and it does take awhile), these characters quickly become very real. Trueblood has an ear for colorful descriptions and snappy dialogue, and she doesn't take the easy way out of her characters' complex dilemmas. There are no Prince Charmings, and these women are more concerned with glass ceilings than with glass slippers.

Melinda Bargreen is the classical-music critic for The Seattle Times.