Compensation by Augustine Cerf

A brilliantly provocative and compulsive novel in which a husband and wife conceive an unorthodox plan to preserve their late son’s memory, and bend the rules of motherhood to their will . . .

Georges is dead. Charlotte’s darling son has died, still dressed and lying on top of his sheets. It is 4 pm, and typically the 34-year-old would have already been downstairs for a sip of the coffee his mother has brewed for him. But today, he has drunkenly hit his head, fallen into an eternal sleep, and left her with only her adulterer husband for company. As Erik shuts himself in his office to pore over his spam mail and watch porn, Charlotte desperately casts around for any way through her immeasurable grief.

She reaches a chilling solution: Erik, a surgeon, will harvest Georges’ sperm, and a surrogate will bring his baby into the world. Charlotte does not care who the surrogate is. All that matters is that she gets the chance to continue—reimagine—her son’s legacy. But as Charlotte’s plan develops, and she invites another woman into her home, the power quickly begins to slip out of her hands. And soon, an intoxicating cocktail of desire, desperation, and guilt forces the trio to ask: What is the real price of a mother’s love? 

Deliciously dark and unsettlingly funny, Compensation is a biting novel about power: those who have it, and those who wish they did. A poignant and twisted psychological portrait of marriage and statehood, it is a story of delusion, repression, and longing that surprises and subverts until the very final page.