KNOCKED UP

The art of navel-gazing carried to a new high (or low) in a sometimes whiny and exasperating, yet very funny diary of a pregnancy from six hours after conception to two weeks after C-section.

Eckler, a lifestyle columnist for Canada’s National Post, a job that involves interviewing celebrities and covering film and bar openings, is sure she’s pregnant when she wakes up the morning after her engagement party. A couple of weeks later, she confirms it with no fewer than four home pregnancy tests. When she proposes writing about it for the National Post, her boss agrees and gives the story a front-page headline. A minor celebrity in her own right, and an unabashed fan of celebrities (“Kate Hudson is pregnant! I’m so excited. It’s so much better when you live your life alongside a celebrity’s. It makes what you’re going through all the more relevant”), Eckler is determined that pregnancy and motherhood won’t change her glamorous, party-girl life. She divides her diary, based on her columns in the Post, into trimesters, “The Longest Three Months of My Life,” “The Fat Months” and “The Even Fatter Months.” Appearance is clearly paramount. While pleased when her breasts grow fuller, she is appalled when her eating-for-two diet of Big Macs and fries shows up on her hips. “Is my ass fat?” she asks again and again and again of the nameless father-to-be, referred to throughout as simply “the fiancé.” Meanwhile, she worries that a certain “Sexy Young Intern” is after her job, acquires an attentive new friend, “Cute Single Man,” and struggles to keep up with her single, designer-clad, still slim, barhopping girlfriends. Not to be mistaken for a pregnancy guide, Eckler’s chronicle offers little advice, unless you count the recommendation to get a bikini wax and a pedicure before going to the hospital.

The self-absorption can be off-putting, but the frankness, quirky style and light touch are a winning combination even so.