It tells the story of twins who are educated while still in their mother's uterus and one of them ends up refusing to be born; he struggles with his mother and with God and eventually becomes a celebrity while still unborn.

[1] Stewart M. Lindh wrote in Los Angeles Times, "What Pascal Bruckner, one of France's finest contemporary novelists, does in The Divine Child is to take us on a Candide-like journey into the world of neonatology".

Lindh called the novel "no mere Gaelic version of Look Who's Talking, but a fierce satire of science gone wild".

[2] Kirkus Reviews called the novel "A would-be Rabelaisian novel from French writer Bruckner (Evil Angels, 1987), who has an interesting idea -- defy death by refusing to be born -- but smothers it with gratuitously explicit sex, grotesque physical details, and old-hat intellectualism.

... One of those too-clever novels where the writer is more intent on strutting his stuff than telling a convincing tale.