50 pages • 1 hour read
Danielle ValentineDelicate Condition
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Interlude 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Day 14: Egg Retrieval” - Part 2: “Days 17-21: Embryo Transfer”
Prologue Summary
The narrator, Anna Alcott, reflects on the moment she knew that her pregnancy journey would be complicated and unusual. She remembers a night early in her pregnancy when she felt someone in her bed who was not her husband. The stranger, a woman, whispered the word “baby” in Anna’s ear before absconding with the fetal photo Anna kept by her bedside.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Anna, an NYC-based actress undergoing IVF, climbs out of the shower to find that she’s missed several calls from her husband, Dex. He’s already at the fertility clinic, and she should have been there an hour ago in preparation for her egg retrieval surgery. Anna is confused because, according to her phone’s calendar, she’s not late; she hurries out regardless. On the way to the subway, a woman in a blue baseball cap stands just outside her apartment. The woman rushes off when Anna sees her.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
At the fertility clinic, Dex expresses his frustration with Anna; he had to convince the hospital to keep Anna’s appointment. Anna notices women watching her in the waiting room. She’s convinced their gazes are due to the unexpected success of her recent film, The Auteur, which has catapulted her into the public eye. Her doctor, Dr. Hill, sedates her.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
After the procedure, as Anna wakes, Dr. Hill states that the egg retrieval was successful and Anna shouldn’t feel much pain. Anna is in a great deal of pain, but tries to ignore it as she leaves. On her way out, she runs into a woman the receptionist, Cora, refers to as “Ms. Preecher.” Preecher identifies Anna, but Anna, too tired to talk to a presumed fan, rushes past. As Anna leaves the clinic, she hears Preecher surreptitiously photograph her.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
Though Anna is disturbed by the unwelcome photo, she’s soon distracted. A woman in a blue baseball cap now stands across the street, seemingly the same woman who was outside Anna’s apartment earlier. Anna dismisses this as coincidence. Back at her apartment, Anna receives a call from Emily, her publicist, who tells her that she’s updating Anna’s calendar with a late-night talk show appearance to publicize The Auteur. A disgruntled Dex argues that the publicity campaign is only adding to Anna’s stress. His irritation is compounded when he finds Anna’s perishable progesterone suppositories left out, even though Anna is certain she refrigerated them. Dex arranges for a new prescription.
Interlude 1 Summary: “Io Preecher, 1987”
In 1987, Io Preecher, a woman in need of money, follows the advice of her friend May to become a surrogate mother. Io is happy to receive $10,000 for her work, but the pregnancy pain is more punishing that she ever imagined.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary
Anna and Dex go to dinner with Frank and Talia, the CFO and CEO of Dex’s company. Anna is on edge because she’s expecting a phone call from Dr. Hill, so she goes to the restroom and, once she’s sure it’s empty, calls her friend, the famous actress Siobhan Walsh. Siobhan comforts Anna. Anna runs into Talia as she’s leaving the restroom and, in the course of complaining about Frank, Talia accidentally mentions Adeline, Dex’s ex-wife, with whom Talia is still friends. Talia quickly changes the subject, but the reference leaves Anna unsettled. There’s a lot she doesn’t know about Dex’s past. As Anna leaves, she notices that someone was actually in one of the stalls.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary
Back at the table, Anna finds that she has missed the call from Dr. Hill, and Dex has taken it instead. Though Dex is further irritated by Anna’s apparent negligence, the news is good: The egg retrieval has resulted in a high-quality embryo that will be transferred into Anna. After returning home, Anna stares at the appointment in her phone’s calendar; as she watches, the appointment time changes. Now almost certain someone is trying to sabotage her IVF, Anna considers suspects, thinking in particular about an online account that regularly posts vitriolic attacks about her and her IVF journey. Looking online, she finds recently posted photos of herself coupled with hateful rhetoric from an account called preecherspeaks, who she assumes to be Ms. Preecher. Anna thinks about telling Dex but doesn’t; instead, she changes her passwords and begins to use sticky notes to keep her appointments.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary
Anna and Dex arrive on time for the embryo transfer, which goes smoothly. Back home, Dex goes to pick their dogs up from daycare, and Anna tries to sleep. As she falls asleep, she realizes there’s someone else in bed with her—a woman who whispers “baby” in her ear. Anna leaps out of bed to confront the woman, but the intruder flees before Anna can see her clearly.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary
Anna calls the police, who seem suspicious of her theory that she’s being targeted by someone from the internet. Dex finally returns home, and he prompts Anna to tell the police about people in her life who might wish her harm: Io Preecher; a former roommate who was overly clingy; and a former dog walker who stole her dog for a day. The police note this information and assign a detective to her case, but the following days yield nothing helpful.
A few days after the break-in, Anna takes a pregnancy test and discovers that she’s pregnant.
Interlude 2 Summary: “Rayna Perkins, 2018”
Rayna, a Black medical student in gynecology at Columbia University, walks to class every day. Each day, she passes a statue of a man hailed as a hero in her field by the white establishment despite his unethical experiments on Black women. The statue eventually attracts protestors, and Rayna joins their numbers. During a protest, she meets another Black woman who pulls Rayna aside and tells her that she’s been watching Rayna and would like Rayna to work with her.
Prologue-Interlude 2 Analysis
Delicate Condition’s Prologue situates the reader in media res, beginning the narrative at the climactic moment of Part 1 rather than at the beginning of Anna’s IVF journey. This type of narrative hook is common in the psychological horror novel because it creates a sense of immediacy and narrative momentum. Valentine does more with this prologue than simply engaging the reader’s curiosity, though. This opening establishes the groundwork for many of the themes that the novel will later explore. It begins with the assertion that “All mothers have one thing in common: pain” (XI), which makes clear early on the novel’s overarching exploration of Patriarchal Institutions’ Failure to Acknowledge Female Pain. Anna’s discussion of the superstition that women more frequently deliver during a full moon also creates a connection between motherhood and monstrosity. It is, essentially, a suggestion that situates the birthing process among other animalistic and mystical processes, foreshadowing Valentine’s investigation of Monstrosity as Female Survival.
These opening chapters explore the onslaught of anonymous misogyny that comes with Anna’s movement from private citizen to public persona. At the start of Delicate Condition, Anna is at a turning point in her career: she’s moved from relative obscurity as an actress to overnight fame with the unexpected success of The Auteur. Online harassment by strangers on the Internet has already begun, with an emphasis on calling her an “old lady, crypt keeper, snake” (53); these insults annoy Anna in particular because they target not only her gender but also her age. The cyberbullying goes further, though, as these online accounts threaten to come find Anna in real time whenever she posts a picture of herself in public; Io Preecher triggers Anna’s anxiety about this form of harassment by taking a picture of Anna outside of the fertility clinic without her permission. Valentine uses Anna’s sudden entry into public-facing life to capture and represent the misogyny that many pregnant women face, which includes a constant public scrutiny. People like Io Preecher feel entitled to inappropriately use Anna’s body and image for their own benefit because Anna has recently become more famous. Anna experiences a similar loss of agency and boundaries with the public as she becomes pregnant. Preecher’s surreptitious photo-taking mirrors the scene in the pharmacy later in the novel when the store clerk feels comfortable touching Anna’s stomach without her permission. Fame, like pregnancy, strips Anna of her bodily autonomy.
This section of the novel spends much of its time introducing the complex dynamics between Anna and Dex. Their relationship is, superficially, a loving one: they have developed in-jokes and their own private forms of communication; Dex makes sure to come to all of Anna’s appointments; and he doesn’t (initially) lose his temper when Anna seems to be forgetting key parts of her IVF treatment. These opening chapters, though, also show how Dex’s impulse to gaslight Anna about her own experiences is a deeply ingrained part of their relationship. Sometimes it’s about little things, like whether or not Dex is correctly quoting The Notebook (this interaction is more fully explored in the Themes section under Patriarchal Institutions’ Failure to Acknowledge Female Pain). Sometimes the concern is a larger issue, like Dex’s unwillingness to accept that Anna didn’t forget to refrigerate her progesterone. Regardless, Dex consistently disbelieves Anna and insists that her own lived experiences aren’t consistent with reality. The effects of Dex’s gaslighting and mansplaining are evident throughout this opening section. Anna often feels that she must keep her fears to herself; she hides her pain from Dex as they arrive at the restaurant and chooses not to tell him about the reappearance of the woman in the blue baseball cap. These fault lines in their relationship drive Anna toward her connections with Talia and Siobhan, underscoring the importance of female friendship in the context of The Necessity and Limits of Female Friendship.
