Reproduction

‘Compelling, elegant and bitingly smart, Reproduction left me reeling. It is playful and serious, witty and searing, inventive and heart-rending. I utterly loved it.’ Nell Stevens, author of Briefly, A Delicious Life ‘I read this novel in a single rapturous sitting, torn between the desire to hurtle through its hypnotic prose and the desire to reread every perfect sentence. Reproduction exquisitely captures the lunacy of inhabiting an animal body with a human mind, and somehow manages also to be gross, funny, heartrending, and formally acrobatic. Louisa Hall is a singular talent and I am a devotee.’ Melissa Febos, author of Body Work and Girlhood ‘A brave and dynamic novel about the creation of life and art – narratively free, compulsively readable, and true to life.’ Tao Lin, author of Leave Society and Taipei ‘What a brilliant novel! I was moved, troubled, enchanted; hardly able to breathe as I read. Hall’s dazzling and original tale has the force of myth, embodying the monstrous challenges of reproducing in our strange new world.’ Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and Natural History ‘It’s taken me seven years of reading, and about a thousand more books, to be able to say once again: “This is the best book I’ve ever read.” For one thing, Louisa Hall has written what is by far the best depiction of childbirth I’ve ever seen in print. In other pages, she has perfectly captured the hollow void of grief after the miscarriage of a wanted child. She has reminded me of the sometime-strangeness of living inside a woman’s body when it refuses to get pregnant when you want it to, or gets pregnant when you don’t want it to. I’ve also had the privilege of spending time with a deeply feeling, deeply observant narrator, and she has gifted me with a wise and revelatory view of these times. When I read this book again in ten years I’ll surely be saying to myself: ‘Yes, that is exactly how it was.’ It’s a marvellous gift of a book.’ Claire Oshetsky, author of Chouette For readers of Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill, and Doireann Ní Ghríofa, a deeply intimate novel about pregnancy, birth, and artistic creation, by the Dylan Thomas Prize-shortlisted author of Trinity and Speak. A woman begins work on a novel about Mary Shelley while pregnant for the first time. Recently married, she has just moved from New York to Montana. As the woman writes, fragments of Shelley’s story begin to detach themselves from the page. Moving through her reproductive years, Shelley endured a catalogue of losses painful beyond comprehension. Still, she wrote, conceiving Frankenstein in 1818. The woman’s experiences of pregnancy, miscarriage and labour are traumatic and disorienting, especially in the context of political upheaval, climate crisis, and an ongoing pandemic. Finally, she gives birth to a daughter and together they emerge into another world. Then a friend from the past reappears. Anna is a biochemist who has been struggling to become a parent, a scientist who sees everything as an experiment. How far will she go in her desire to bring a baby into being? A Frankenstein for the twenty-first century, Reproduction is a story of intense grief and transformative joy, and a powerful depiction of the emotional and physical costs of creating new life. 'Louisa Hall is a writer to be admired.' Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds ‘Crystalline, utterly persuasive and transfixing.’ New York Times on Speak ‘Hypnotic . . . Hall has a knack for the precise, underwritten image.’ Guardian on Speak