UNTIL THE REAL THING COMES ALONG

The biological clock is ticking in this latest take on the angst and ills of contemporary women by veteran Berg (What We Keep, 1998, etc.). Patty Hansen, the 36-year-old narrator, is plucky, close to her family, and probably too kind for her own good. A real-estate agent in a coastal Massachusetts town, she’s too polite to chase after clients and often spends hours with people who have no intention of buying. Her social life is on hold, too, since Ethan, her former fiancÇ and the only man she’s ever loved, told her a few years back that he was gay. Patty’s known Ethan since the sixth grade, when he once saved her from being beaten up. Now, she’s tired of blind dates and longs to have a baby of her own. One evening, anxious about what seems an increasingly limited future, she calls Ethan and asks whether he would make her pregnant. He is surprisingly willing (he wants children, too), Patty conveniently gets pregnant that night, and both parents-to-be are equally thrilled. Ethan doesn—t want to get married, but he suggests that they move out to Minnesota for a while to see if they can live together. Once there, though, Patty—lonely, pregnant, and homesick’soon realizes that Ethan will always be drawn to men. When her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she heads back home in time for the baby (a girl)to be born. Reconciled to being a single mom, Patty makes a new life for herself. As she watches the loving way her father copes with her mother’s illness, she realizes that life is what you make of it and that she has enough good things going for her, at least for the moment. Neatly affirmative solutions to trendy problems. Not Berg’s best.