Reproduction
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A lucid, genre-defying novel that explores the surreality of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in a country in crisis
A novelist attempts to write a book about Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, a mother and artist whose harrowing pregnancies reveal the cost of human reproduction. Soon, however, the novelist’s own painful experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as her increasing awareness of larger threats from climate change to pandemic, force her to give up on the book and turn instead to writing a contemporary Frankenstein, based on the story of an old friend who mysteriously reappears in her life.
In telling a story that ranges from pregnancy to miscarriage to traumatic birth, from motherhood to the frontiers of reproductive science, Louisa Hall draws powerfully from her own experiences, as well as the stories of two other women: Mary Shelley and Anna, a scientist and would-be parent who is contemplating the possibilities, and morality, of genetic modification.
Both devastating and joyful, elegant and exacting, Reproduction is a powerful reminder of the hazards and the rewards involved in creating new life, and a profoundly feminist exploration of motherhood, female friendship, and artistic ambition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hall (Speak) delves into conception, pregnancy, and childbirth with the story of a writer, her friend, and Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. In 2018, the unnamed pregnant narrator moves from New York City to Montana with her husband. She has a miscarriage, and while working on a novel about Shelley, she becomes fixated on Shelley's horrifying experiences, including the death of her three young children and a near-fatal miscarriage. The narrator also reconnects with her old friend Anna, a scientist studying human genetic engineering. As Anna attempts to get pregnant via IVF and a sperm donor, the narrator incorporates Anna's story into her novel, as well as an account of her own miscarriage and increasingly nightmarish reproductive challenges during the early days of the pandemic. Hall's unconventional novel, thick with dreams, the narrator's pregnancy-induced nausea, and the dread induced by wildfires and Covid-19, offers visceral descriptions and striking insights (describing Anna, the narrator writes: "She'd felt like their monster: out of control of her own body. It had filled her with rage, which made her doubt her capacity to be a good mother. But she'd also been excited"). Graceful, precise, and perceptive, this is a memorable take on the danger and strangeness of pregnancy.
