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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.
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.
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Reviews
Stacey Glemboski's forthright yet intimate performance gives this quiet novel the immediacy of a memoir. The narrator, a novelist, wrestles with her feelings about pregnancy, birth, motherhood, and womanhood as she attempts to write a novel about Mary Shelley. Frustrated with her progress on it, she decides instead to write about an old friend's surreal experience of pregnancy. Glemboski's measure
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