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Reproduction
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.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published June 13, 2023
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7372 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 193 reviews
March 22, 2023
It’s taken me seven years of reading, and about a thousand books, to be able to say once again: “This is the best book I’ve ever read.”
Here are some reasons why I feel this way.
Luisa Hall has written what is by far the best depiction of childbirth I've ever seen in print.
Elsewhere in her book she has perfectly captured the hollow void of grief a woman feels after the miscarriage of a wanted child, and in other pages she reminds 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.
And yet this book holds so much more than these particulars about living inside a woman's body. I've also had the privilege of spending time with a deeply feeling, deeply observant narrator. She has gifted me with a wise and revelatory view of these times. I feel as if I can see this right-now world that we're living through so much more clearly than I did before, because of this book. The plague. The weird climate events and what they might portend. The way new technologies keep upending our lives at an ever more frantic pace. The hysterical politics.
When I read this book again in ten years I'll surely be saying to myself: "yes, that is exactly how it was."
Some people have asked in the comments to this review or in DM's which book made me feel this exhilarating feeling of "this is the best book I've ever read" last time. It was Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.
Here are some reasons why I feel this way.
Luisa Hall has written what is by far the best depiction of childbirth I've ever seen in print.
Elsewhere in her book she has perfectly captured the hollow void of grief a woman feels after the miscarriage of a wanted child, and in other pages she reminds 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.
And yet this book holds so much more than these particulars about living inside a woman's body. I've also had the privilege of spending time with a deeply feeling, deeply observant narrator. She has gifted me with a wise and revelatory view of these times. I feel as if I can see this right-now world that we're living through so much more clearly than I did before, because of this book. The plague. The weird climate events and what they might portend. The way new technologies keep upending our lives at an ever more frantic pace. The hysterical politics.
When I read this book again in ten years I'll surely be saying to myself: "yes, that is exactly how it was."
Some people have asked in the comments to this review or in DM's which book made me feel this exhilarating feeling of "this is the best book I've ever read" last time. It was Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.
August 15, 2024
It’s been a while since I’ve read anything quite so infuriating as Louisa Hall’s autofictional novel. Hall, not surprisingly for a poet who now teaches creative writing at Iowa, is more than capable of crafting fluid, lyrical sentences, and her piece features numerous arresting images and descriptive passages. Unfortunately, I found her narrative’s perspective and underlying arguments far less palatable. Hall’s narrator’s an academic who’s fascinated by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and by aspects of Shelley’s own life, in particular Shelley’s successive pregnancies and miscarriages, which she wants to explore in her own fiction. In 1814, aged 17, Shelley ran away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, over the next few years she became pregnant six times, endured a near-fatal miscarriage, and was finally left with one surviving child. Interestingly there’s little to no attempt to consider Shelley in her historical context here, how far her “choices” were choices, how far dictated by society or even by lack of reliable contraception – it wasn’t until the 1850s that ‘family limitation’ became both more possible and more acceptable for women of Shelley’s class. Instead, Hall’s anonymous narrator becomes obsessed with possible parallels between her own thwarted attempts to have a child and Shelley’s experiences.
Although there are some unusually frank, even moving, depictions of the pain that can accompany childbirth, as well as the potentially traumatic aftermath of birth and miscarriage, Hall’s novel often tips towards sentimental. The story unfolds between 2018 and 2021, during Trump’s turbulent presidency and the ensuing fallout. Hall’s narrator’s hyperaware of the dystopian nature of contemporary America. Yet, despite the narrator’s conclusion that she exists in “…a strange, violent world, a world in which the waters were rising” marked by political unrest, white supremacist terrorism and the all-too-visible ravages of climate change, she never once questions the ethics of having children. Children who will grow up to navigate an increasingly devastated – and devastating – environment. The arguments for and against taking such a momentous decision are never fully or convincingly explored, which seems particularly strange in a global context where more and more people are opting out of parenthood precisely because of the kinds of issues haunting Hall’s narrator. Instead, Hall’s story falls back on an unstated gender essentialism which is presumably supposed to justify the narrator’s otherwise-inexplicable choices; often reliant on a rather sweeping set of assumptions around so-called biological imperatives which it seems we’re not expected to question. The conservatism of notions of the desire for parenthood as a given, both inevitable and necessary for self-fulfilment, are further highlighted by the narrator’s relatively privileged status: white, middle-class, cis, heterosexual, with adequate health insurance. Although social, cultural and economic factors are yet another set of frustratingly underexplored elements of the novel.
This conventional outlook manifests too in the narrator’s reading of Shelley’s work, which she views entirely through the lens of Shelley as a mother and someone who’s experienced the loss of a child. That’s not to say this is an entirely aberrant reading but it’s one reading among many of a novel that’s spawned numerous rather more sophisticated and rather more radical interpretations – none of which are entertained here. The narrator shies away from thinking through the role of the creature in Shelley’s novel, the ways in which the character might highlight issues around queerness, ‘othering’ and/or explode myths around what is/isn’t natural. Similarly, Hall’s novel touches on speciesism and its connection to climate change but doesn’t follow through, instead the narrator suddenly, and astoundingly naïvely, happens to notice that factory farming exists and recognise that it’s not good! Otherwise, the use of animals in the narrative is deeply disappointing. The narrator has a strong bond with her dog but sees him not so much as a sentient being with his own needs but as emotional support and prop for her own. She often represents their relationship as akin to the one between man and dog in Shelley’s The Last Man - I found it hard not to compare Hall’s approach unfavourably with Haushofer’s attempts to explode human/animal cultural divides in her nascent ecofeminist The Wall.
The final section of the book centres on the narrator’s troubled friendship with scientist Anna which provides a space to rework themes from Shelley. However, Anna’s story seems both forced and, ultimately, trite. Although it’s also the only part of the novel that attempts to introduce questions around nature versus culture in reproduction and birth. Overall, disappointing and irritatingly ill-conceived.
NB: I’d highly recommend my GR friend Endrju’s review for a more detailed examination of the novel’s various problematic elements.
Although there are some unusually frank, even moving, depictions of the pain that can accompany childbirth, as well as the potentially traumatic aftermath of birth and miscarriage, Hall’s novel often tips towards sentimental. The story unfolds between 2018 and 2021, during Trump’s turbulent presidency and the ensuing fallout. Hall’s narrator’s hyperaware of the dystopian nature of contemporary America. Yet, despite the narrator’s conclusion that she exists in “…a strange, violent world, a world in which the waters were rising” marked by political unrest, white supremacist terrorism and the all-too-visible ravages of climate change, she never once questions the ethics of having children. Children who will grow up to navigate an increasingly devastated – and devastating – environment. The arguments for and against taking such a momentous decision are never fully or convincingly explored, which seems particularly strange in a global context where more and more people are opting out of parenthood precisely because of the kinds of issues haunting Hall’s narrator. Instead, Hall’s story falls back on an unstated gender essentialism which is presumably supposed to justify the narrator’s otherwise-inexplicable choices; often reliant on a rather sweeping set of assumptions around so-called biological imperatives which it seems we’re not expected to question. The conservatism of notions of the desire for parenthood as a given, both inevitable and necessary for self-fulfilment, are further highlighted by the narrator’s relatively privileged status: white, middle-class, cis, heterosexual, with adequate health insurance. Although social, cultural and economic factors are yet another set of frustratingly underexplored elements of the novel.
This conventional outlook manifests too in the narrator’s reading of Shelley’s work, which she views entirely through the lens of Shelley as a mother and someone who’s experienced the loss of a child. That’s not to say this is an entirely aberrant reading but it’s one reading among many of a novel that’s spawned numerous rather more sophisticated and rather more radical interpretations – none of which are entertained here. The narrator shies away from thinking through the role of the creature in Shelley’s novel, the ways in which the character might highlight issues around queerness, ‘othering’ and/or explode myths around what is/isn’t natural. Similarly, Hall’s novel touches on speciesism and its connection to climate change but doesn’t follow through, instead the narrator suddenly, and astoundingly naïvely, happens to notice that factory farming exists and recognise that it’s not good! Otherwise, the use of animals in the narrative is deeply disappointing. The narrator has a strong bond with her dog but sees him not so much as a sentient being with his own needs but as emotional support and prop for her own. She often represents their relationship as akin to the one between man and dog in Shelley’s The Last Man - I found it hard not to compare Hall’s approach unfavourably with Haushofer’s attempts to explode human/animal cultural divides in her nascent ecofeminist The Wall.
The final section of the book centres on the narrator’s troubled friendship with scientist Anna which provides a space to rework themes from Shelley. However, Anna’s story seems both forced and, ultimately, trite. Although it’s also the only part of the novel that attempts to introduce questions around nature versus culture in reproduction and birth. Overall, disappointing and irritatingly ill-conceived.
NB: I’d highly recommend my GR friend Endrju’s review for a more detailed examination of the novel’s various problematic elements.
July 1, 2023
4.5 stars
In Reproduction, Louisa Hall throws a lot at the reader. Pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, motherhood, abortion, embryo screening, eugenics, and climate change – it’s all there, all within a slim 225 pages.
From what I’ve gathered, the book is more autofiction than fiction. I believe Hall draws from her own experiences, including her own miscarriage, the narrator being an unnamed novelist who is struggling to write a book about Mary Shelley and Frankenstein while trying to have a baby.
I was surprised to learn that Shelley herself had a difficult road as a mother. She lost multiple children; their deaths, of course, heart-wrenching for her. And its through this lens – the lens of Mary Shelley, Hall’s personal story, and a biochemist character named Anna – that Hall examines the joy and danger women face when creating life.
Graphic miscarriage occurs on the page, as well as traumatic childbirth. There’s a focus on abortion, too. So steer clear if you don’t like harsh realism and politics in your fiction.
I found the story fascinating, though. The novel is so well written and so interesting. It really made me think.
I only wish it had a bit more emotion to it. Hall writes in a meandering style that feels detached, and she doesn’t even name any of the characters aside from Anna. It’s as if she’s maintaining a safe distance from the story, perhaps as an emotional protective measure since some of the events appear to be true to her life.
I must now read all the Louisa Hall books. Speak will be next.
My sincerest appreciation to Louisa Hall, Ecco, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.
In Reproduction, Louisa Hall throws a lot at the reader. Pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, motherhood, abortion, embryo screening, eugenics, and climate change – it’s all there, all within a slim 225 pages.
From what I’ve gathered, the book is more autofiction than fiction. I believe Hall draws from her own experiences, including her own miscarriage, the narrator being an unnamed novelist who is struggling to write a book about Mary Shelley and Frankenstein while trying to have a baby.
I was surprised to learn that Shelley herself had a difficult road as a mother. She lost multiple children; their deaths, of course, heart-wrenching for her. And its through this lens – the lens of Mary Shelley, Hall’s personal story, and a biochemist character named Anna – that Hall examines the joy and danger women face when creating life.
Graphic miscarriage occurs on the page, as well as traumatic childbirth. There’s a focus on abortion, too. So steer clear if you don’t like harsh realism and politics in your fiction.
I found the story fascinating, though. The novel is so well written and so interesting. It really made me think.
I only wish it had a bit more emotion to it. Hall writes in a meandering style that feels detached, and she doesn’t even name any of the characters aside from Anna. It’s as if she’s maintaining a safe distance from the story, perhaps as an emotional protective measure since some of the events appear to be true to her life.
I must now read all the Louisa Hall books. Speak will be next.
My sincerest appreciation to Louisa Hall, Ecco, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.
August 8, 2024
Well, hallelujah. I just turned the final page of this singular novel, and my thought is that I've just read something real.
It's also somewhat strange, if you try to describe it to someone. I've done so twice over the last few days, and find my listeners' eyes sort of wander away somewhere else, after I mention Mary Shelley, and her difficult life, and all the children she had that died, and then the narrator, a writer who also suffers loss, and then the narrator's friend, who's a scientist, who wants to eliminate risk to the embryo, and the themes of pregnancy, creation, catastrophe, and pain... yes, those eyes did wander a bit, I wasn't imagining it....
Maybe mine would too, if someone tried to describe this to me, but thankfully I went into this read blindly, because of the deep trust I have in Claire Oshetsky who calls it one of the best books she's ever read. Claire has enriched my reading life greatly since we met on Goodreads a decade ago. I have followed them through many pages; they expertly cleared the way for many adventures, and my literary world was cracked wide open.
So, Reproduction. Read it if you're a woman, read it if you love women. The section on childbirth is the most true depiction I've ever encountered. The isolation pain brings is something Louisa Hall brilliantly identified, and which brought me right back to my 48 hour labour with my daughter. Being turned away by the nurses, turning to see my then-husband asleep (always, always sleeping!) while I begged the creator for help... so alone with this life-and-death pain, pain that is inexpressible and thus deeply isolating.
Like I said, this is real, and beautiful, and awful. Life.
The narrator describes the book perfectly, here, better that I have:
Perhaps this is the novel to write. A novel about a woman Walton and a woman Frankenstein, and their ambitions to bring a creature to life. It would be a novel about creatures, I thought, but the novel, too, would also be a creature. It would be made of disparate parts, flesh and bone, blood lost in a hemorrhage, stitched-together old skin. A book that would stir with uneasy life. A little disjointed, perhaps, but a book I wouldn't leave. A book I'd keep and tend until it was ready to go on without me.
It's also somewhat strange, if you try to describe it to someone. I've done so twice over the last few days, and find my listeners' eyes sort of wander away somewhere else, after I mention Mary Shelley, and her difficult life, and all the children she had that died, and then the narrator, a writer who also suffers loss, and then the narrator's friend, who's a scientist, who wants to eliminate risk to the embryo, and the themes of pregnancy, creation, catastrophe, and pain... yes, those eyes did wander a bit, I wasn't imagining it....
Maybe mine would too, if someone tried to describe this to me, but thankfully I went into this read blindly, because of the deep trust I have in Claire Oshetsky who calls it one of the best books she's ever read. Claire has enriched my reading life greatly since we met on Goodreads a decade ago. I have followed them through many pages; they expertly cleared the way for many adventures, and my literary world was cracked wide open.
So, Reproduction. Read it if you're a woman, read it if you love women. The section on childbirth is the most true depiction I've ever encountered. The isolation pain brings is something Louisa Hall brilliantly identified, and which brought me right back to my 48 hour labour with my daughter. Being turned away by the nurses, turning to see my then-husband asleep (always, always sleeping!) while I begged the creator for help... so alone with this life-and-death pain, pain that is inexpressible and thus deeply isolating.
Like I said, this is real, and beautiful, and awful. Life.
The narrator describes the book perfectly, here, better that I have:
Perhaps this is the novel to write. A novel about a woman Walton and a woman Frankenstein, and their ambitions to bring a creature to life. It would be a novel about creatures, I thought, but the novel, too, would also be a creature. It would be made of disparate parts, flesh and bone, blood lost in a hemorrhage, stitched-together old skin. A book that would stir with uneasy life. A little disjointed, perhaps, but a book I wouldn't leave. A book I'd keep and tend until it was ready to go on without me.
August 21, 2023
In engaging, increasingly visceral prose, author Louisa Hall tackles humanity's approach to the creation of, and the loss of, new life. How is it that a delicate species like us have access to such power and responsibility? Are we not basically just clumsy-pawed mammals with way too much consciousness to be trusted?
The writing is incredible, whether the author is describing the actual experiences of pregnancy and miscarriage, the languid play of light and shadow, the falseness of platitudes, or the proliferation of effects from a rapidly worsening world on our lives. Hall perfectly presents how draining it can feel, to have multiple aspects of one's life go wrong all at the same time.
The author directs the reader not just to learn how hard all this is, but actually to feel how impossible this can be, in our blood, bones, and psyche. The narrative cycles several times through feelings of exasperation, pain, fear, abandonment, exhaustion, and vulnerability.
The parallel references to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's writings, and to space exploration, are surprisingly apt. This is a well-thought out set of sequences, arranged much like a play in three acts. Every scene is purposeful, powerful, and impactful. Some of it is going to haunt me for a while.
The writing is incredible, whether the author is describing the actual experiences of pregnancy and miscarriage, the languid play of light and shadow, the falseness of platitudes, or the proliferation of effects from a rapidly worsening world on our lives. Hall perfectly presents how draining it can feel, to have multiple aspects of one's life go wrong all at the same time.
The author directs the reader not just to learn how hard all this is, but actually to feel how impossible this can be, in our blood, bones, and psyche. The narrative cycles several times through feelings of exasperation, pain, fear, abandonment, exhaustion, and vulnerability.
The parallel references to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's writings, and to space exploration, are surprisingly apt. This is a well-thought out set of sequences, arranged much like a play in three acts. Every scene is purposeful, powerful, and impactful. Some of it is going to haunt me for a while.
May 30, 2024
Addendum: On my second read, and this book is even better than I remembered. One of the best books I've ever read. Incredible, detailed, gripping description of childbirth as I haven't read elsewhere. Poetic sensibility that is exquisitely deployed in echoing images. A sensation of being there, with the narrator, as she writes, while I read the book. The empty grief of miscarriage, the hollowness. Her meditations on loneliness, pain, emptiness, creation. Her effortless slide across landscapes, through emotions and experiences.
If you read one book this year, make it this one.
Original review: This book is exquisite, layered, revelatory, poetic. The connections between and among the different characters and narratives (and also between researched "nonfiction" and narrative "fiction"), the repetition of images in different settings. I was rapt and am now emboldened in my own writing. A book of possibility for the writer and a book of enormous feeling for the reader.
If you read one book this year, make it this one.
Original review: This book is exquisite, layered, revelatory, poetic. The connections between and among the different characters and narratives (and also between researched "nonfiction" and narrative "fiction"), the repetition of images in different settings. I was rapt and am now emboldened in my own writing. A book of possibility for the writer and a book of enormous feeling for the reader.
February 3, 2023
3.5 stars. I got a little too excited when I realized that Hall's new novel considers motherhood in part through the story of Mary Shelley, both as mother and as the creator of Frankenstein. It felt like a perfect fit for Hall, whose SPEAK is one of my favorite novels of the last decade. This never quite melded together for me, the loose, almost rambling prose kept me adrift and a little detached, but there is still a lot to chew on.
This is a novel with a lot of loss, including Hall's own miscarriage (described in detail on page) and several other miscarriages, struggles with fertility, stillbirths, and deaths of young children, including Shelley a few times over. (I had no idea Shelley's story of motherhood was so deep with loss, it was wrenching.) At times it feels full of grief and at other times it can feel almost distant, especially as Hall moves so quickly between her own story and those of others. The marketing copy seems to describe this as autofiction and it certainly reads that way.
The themes overlap in beautiful ways, and Hall brings in some speculative elements, tying together the desperation of fertility and muddy ethical issues around screening embryos and eugenics and the creation of life both through natural and artificial means. It's clear why Shelley is such a good fit, and not just because of the monster she made.
The truth is that if this wasn't by Hall I may not have been a little disappointed because I know what a punch she can pack and this novel is a different kind of thing than her previous two works. I am probably being a little hard on her.
This is a novel with a lot of loss, including Hall's own miscarriage (described in detail on page) and several other miscarriages, struggles with fertility, stillbirths, and deaths of young children, including Shelley a few times over. (I had no idea Shelley's story of motherhood was so deep with loss, it was wrenching.) At times it feels full of grief and at other times it can feel almost distant, especially as Hall moves so quickly between her own story and those of others. The marketing copy seems to describe this as autofiction and it certainly reads that way.
The themes overlap in beautiful ways, and Hall brings in some speculative elements, tying together the desperation of fertility and muddy ethical issues around screening embryos and eugenics and the creation of life both through natural and artificial means. It's clear why Shelley is such a good fit, and not just because of the monster she made.
The truth is that if this wasn't by Hall I may not have been a little disappointed because I know what a punch she can pack and this novel is a different kind of thing than her previous two works. I am probably being a little hard on her.
January 26, 2024
(4.5) Procreation. Duplication. Imitation. All three connotations are appropriate for the title of an allusive novel about motherhood and doppelgangers. A pregnant writer starts composing a novel about Mary Shelley and finds the borders between fiction and (auto)biography blurring: “parts of her story detached themselves from the page and clung to my life.” The first long chapter, “Conception,” is full of biographical information about Shelley and the writing and plot of Frankenstein, chiming with Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout, which I read last year. It’s a recognisable piece of autofiction, moving with Hall from Texas to New York to Montana to Iowa as she marries, takes on various university teaching roles and goes through two miscarriages and then, in the “Birth” section, the traumatic birth of her daughter, after which she required surgery and blood transfusions.
These first two sections are exceptional. There’s a sublime clarity to them, like life has been transcribed to the page exactly as it was lived. The change of gears to the third section, “Science Fiction,” put me off, and it took me a long time to get back into the flow. In this final part, the narrator reconnects with a friend and colleague, Anna, who is determined to get pregnant on her own and genetically engineer her embryos to minimise all risk. Here she is more like a Rachel Cusk protagonist, eclipsed by another’s story and serving primarily as a recorder. I found this tedious. It all takes place during Trump’s presidency and the Covid pandemic, heightening the strangeness of matrescence and of the lengths Anna goes to. “What, after all, in these end times we lived in, was still really ‘natural’ at all?” the narrator ponders. She casts herself as the narrating Walton, and Anna as Dr. Frankenstein (or sometimes his monster), in this tale of transformation – chosen or not – and peril in a country hurtling toward self-implosion. It’s brilliantly envisioned, and – almost – flawlessly executed.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
These first two sections are exceptional. There’s a sublime clarity to them, like life has been transcribed to the page exactly as it was lived. The change of gears to the third section, “Science Fiction,” put me off, and it took me a long time to get back into the flow. In this final part, the narrator reconnects with a friend and colleague, Anna, who is determined to get pregnant on her own and genetically engineer her embryos to minimise all risk. Here she is more like a Rachel Cusk protagonist, eclipsed by another’s story and serving primarily as a recorder. I found this tedious. It all takes place during Trump’s presidency and the Covid pandemic, heightening the strangeness of matrescence and of the lengths Anna goes to. “What, after all, in these end times we lived in, was still really ‘natural’ at all?” the narrator ponders. She casts herself as the narrating Walton, and Anna as Dr. Frankenstein (or sometimes his monster), in this tale of transformation – chosen or not – and peril in a country hurtling toward self-implosion. It’s brilliantly envisioned, and – almost – flawlessly executed.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
March 7, 2024
26th book of 2024.
I wrote a piece on Shelley, Lord Byron and Trelawny in Greece a while ago and did a solid amount of research for it. Most evenings I was trawling through newspaper clippings, through biographies and through what the men themselves had written about that time. I wrote a ridiculous amount of words, mostly amassing to nothing but aimless passion, before stripping it all back to find the heart of what I was saying. When I saw the blurb for Hall's latest novel, a story about motherhood, birth and miscarriage struck alongside Mary Shelley's life, motherhood and miscarriages, I was sold. The second paragraph of the book reads,
And, of course, later on, the famous anecdotes about how Frankenstein came to be, from telling ghosts stories by Lake Geneva with Percy, Byron and Claire.
However, despite Mary's importance in the first part, she fades from the narrative. The descriptions in the middle portion of the book, of labour, miscarriage, bleeding, were incredibly visceral. The passages on childbirth alone were enough for me, as a man, to feel relief and guilt.
Then comes the final long part titled "Science Fiction" in which an old friend of the narrator's, Anna, comes back into her life. Hall showed off a certain skill in the first part but I was sorely disappointed with the final: Anna's past comes to light, her troubles with an abusive ex-boyfriend she tried to "fix", and Hall uses this as a clumsy and obvious parallel to Frankenstein creating his monster and suffering the consequences. She spells it out, frequently. I also began to shake the book furiously at the amount of times she uses the word 'nauseous'; I counted it five times on a two-page spread. Perhaps it is the perfect word for pregnancy, but I couldn't help but think, How did she not realise how jarring it was to be used this many times? So for all my initial excitement, it was a botch job at the end, a baggy and slightly messy book, like, dare I say, bits and pieces sewn together into a monster.
I wrote a piece on Shelley, Lord Byron and Trelawny in Greece a while ago and did a solid amount of research for it. Most evenings I was trawling through newspaper clippings, through biographies and through what the men themselves had written about that time. I wrote a ridiculous amount of words, mostly amassing to nothing but aimless passion, before stripping it all back to find the heart of what I was saying. When I saw the blurb for Hall's latest novel, a story about motherhood, birth and miscarriage struck alongside Mary Shelley's life, motherhood and miscarriages, I was sold. The second paragraph of the book reads,
Still, however, parts of her story detached themselves from the page and clung to my life. The fact, for instance, that in her later years she recalled that Frankenstein was written in the aftermath of a "waking dream": a "pale student" kneeling beside a creature he'd sewn together. The vision terrified her, she said, so absolutely that she couldn't shake it all through that strange, gloomy summer, the summer of 1816, the year after the fall of the Napoleonic empire, when ash from the volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora had blotted out the sun's light.
And, of course, later on, the famous anecdotes about how Frankenstein came to be, from telling ghosts stories by Lake Geneva with Percy, Byron and Claire.
However, despite Mary's importance in the first part, she fades from the narrative. The descriptions in the middle portion of the book, of labour, miscarriage, bleeding, were incredibly visceral. The passages on childbirth alone were enough for me, as a man, to feel relief and guilt.
Then comes the final long part titled "Science Fiction" in which an old friend of the narrator's, Anna, comes back into her life. Hall showed off a certain skill in the first part but I was sorely disappointed with the final: Anna's past comes to light, her troubles with an abusive ex-boyfriend she tried to "fix", and Hall uses this as a clumsy and obvious parallel to Frankenstein creating his monster and suffering the consequences. She spells it out, frequently. I also began to shake the book furiously at the amount of times she uses the word 'nauseous'; I counted it five times on a two-page spread. Perhaps it is the perfect word for pregnancy, but I couldn't help but think, How did she not realise how jarring it was to be used this many times? So for all my initial excitement, it was a botch job at the end, a baggy and slightly messy book, like, dare I say, bits and pieces sewn together into a monster.
November 22, 2024
This was another case of high expectations not being met in a novel.
Reproduction is mostly about a woman's quest to reproduce. Women try for most of their fertile years to avoid pregnancy, then they decide to reproduce, and there are struggles. The trials and tribulations of falling pregnant, staying pregnant, giving birth and the aftermath of that - are all on display, with enough detail. Miscarriages and abortion are also part of the novel (for those unaware, the two are different events).
The novel is told in the first person, which I prefer, especially when it's about such personal matters. For some strange reason, despite the writing being personal, it also kept me at a distance, I expected it to be more visceral, more angry. I know women have been taught for centuries that nobody likes angry women etc., I say the hell with it, there is plenty to be angry about.
Reproduction touches on recent events, such as the big fires in California, the recent Pandemic, and the village idiot elected as the US President.
The author also makes connections and parallels with Mary Shelley's life and her masterpiece, Frankenstein.
So despite this having all the ingredients that appeal to me greatly, why didn't I go ga-ga over it?
Is it because I would have wanted something, anything mentioned about the ridiculous medical/insurance system in the US? What a missed opportunity, even if the author/narrator had no issues with it. I'm not sure.
Anna is one of the characters in this novel. She's a friend, not quite a friend. Through her, Hall makes some points about abortion, domestic abuse, IVF, medical experimentation, and science. While the points made were interesting and food for thought, it was too obvious that Anna was there as a conduit for making the points, which pulled me out of the novel, as I could see the author's hand in it.
Interestingly enough, the narrator's second husband, fathering the babies, barely gets mentioned, he's a side note.
Fair or not, this novel will be compared to Soldier, Sailor as it's got many common threads and is somewhat stylistically similar, albeit I found Soldier, Sailor more visceral.
Reproduction is mostly about a woman's quest to reproduce. Women try for most of their fertile years to avoid pregnancy, then they decide to reproduce, and there are struggles. The trials and tribulations of falling pregnant, staying pregnant, giving birth and the aftermath of that - are all on display, with enough detail. Miscarriages and abortion are also part of the novel (for those unaware, the two are different events).
The novel is told in the first person, which I prefer, especially when it's about such personal matters. For some strange reason, despite the writing being personal, it also kept me at a distance, I expected it to be more visceral, more angry. I know women have been taught for centuries that nobody likes angry women etc., I say the hell with it, there is plenty to be angry about.
Reproduction touches on recent events, such as the big fires in California, the recent Pandemic, and the village idiot elected as the US President.
The author also makes connections and parallels with Mary Shelley's life and her masterpiece, Frankenstein.
So despite this having all the ingredients that appeal to me greatly, why didn't I go ga-ga over it?
Is it because I would have wanted something, anything mentioned about the ridiculous medical/insurance system in the US? What a missed opportunity, even if the author/narrator had no issues with it. I'm not sure.
Anna is one of the characters in this novel. She's a friend, not quite a friend. Through her, Hall makes some points about abortion, domestic abuse, IVF, medical experimentation, and science. While the points made were interesting and food for thought, it was too obvious that Anna was there as a conduit for making the points, which pulled me out of the novel, as I could see the author's hand in it.
Interestingly enough, the narrator's second husband, fathering the babies, barely gets mentioned, he's a side note.
Fair or not, this novel will be compared to Soldier, Sailor as it's got many common threads and is somewhat stylistically similar, albeit I found Soldier, Sailor more visceral.
November 6, 2024
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ for this must read book. Let me start by saying thank you, as I was gifted this book, Reproduction by Louisa Hall, as a Goodreads Giveaways winner.
Nothing is as magnificent, nothing is as ordinary, nothing is as satisfying, nothing is as terrifying, nothing is as humble, nothing is as exalted, nothing is as devastating, nothing is as joyful, nothing is as scary, nothing is as knowable, nothing is as nauseous, nothing is as healthy, nothing is as worrisome, nothing is as reassuring as a woman’s pregnancy. Something that we take for granted, pregnancy, is all of these things and so much more. Louisa Hall, in her novel, Reproduction, takes us through one woman’s experience of contemplating pregnancy, getting pregnant, staying pregnant, losing the pregnancy, working on getting pregnant, succeeding to get pregnant (finally), having a healthy baby and ultimately trying again and again, always facing the peaks and valleys of Reproduction. The science of reproduction is another theme of the book. It reads as a novel, which it is, but it is very real. I highly recommend this book.
Nothing is as magnificent, nothing is as ordinary, nothing is as satisfying, nothing is as terrifying, nothing is as humble, nothing is as exalted, nothing is as devastating, nothing is as joyful, nothing is as scary, nothing is as knowable, nothing is as nauseous, nothing is as healthy, nothing is as worrisome, nothing is as reassuring as a woman’s pregnancy. Something that we take for granted, pregnancy, is all of these things and so much more. Louisa Hall, in her novel, Reproduction, takes us through one woman’s experience of contemplating pregnancy, getting pregnant, staying pregnant, losing the pregnancy, working on getting pregnant, succeeding to get pregnant (finally), having a healthy baby and ultimately trying again and again, always facing the peaks and valleys of Reproduction. The science of reproduction is another theme of the book. It reads as a novel, which it is, but it is very real. I highly recommend this book.
June 22, 2023
This novel is so good, at every level!
The theme of creation is omnipresent throughout the book: pregnancy, ivf, genetic modification of embryos, relationships, art, writing a book. This is set against the background of a world in which there is climate change, a pandemic, and where someone like Trump sets the rules.
Creating is often compared to Mary Shelley's writing of 'Frankenstein' and Frankenstein creating his monster.
Hall writes: “Like Frankenstein,” … “But instead of making a man, you’re making a baby.”
Luckily most baby's don't turn out to become monsters ;-)
Someone compared Louise Hall's writing to Rachel Cusk's, but personally I would compare it more to Deborah Levy's. In Cusk there's often hardly any emotion, but 'Reproduction' is filled with it. Hall, like Levy, describes emotions in a way that makes you feel them as a reader as well. This book had me laugh out loud a couple of times for instance, but it also almost made me cry. A book that manages to do that, and the brilliant and clever writing, deserves absolutely 5 stars!
Many thanks to Ecco and Edelweiss for the ARC.
The theme of creation is omnipresent throughout the book: pregnancy, ivf, genetic modification of embryos, relationships, art, writing a book. This is set against the background of a world in which there is climate change, a pandemic, and where someone like Trump sets the rules.
Creating is often compared to Mary Shelley's writing of 'Frankenstein' and Frankenstein creating his monster.
Hall writes: “Like Frankenstein,” … “But instead of making a man, you’re making a baby.”
Luckily most baby's don't turn out to become monsters ;-)
Someone compared Louise Hall's writing to Rachel Cusk's, but personally I would compare it more to Deborah Levy's. In Cusk there's often hardly any emotion, but 'Reproduction' is filled with it. Hall, like Levy, describes emotions in a way that makes you feel them as a reader as well. This book had me laugh out loud a couple of times for instance, but it also almost made me cry. A book that manages to do that, and the brilliant and clever writing, deserves absolutely 5 stars!
Many thanks to Ecco and Edelweiss for the ARC.
December 23, 2023
“It would be a novel about creatures, I thought, but the novel, too, would also be a creature. It would be made if disparate parts, flesh and bone, blood lost in a hemorrhage, stitched-together old skin. A book that would stir with uneasy life.”
In an era when a mother’s fraught journey of conception, pregnancy, birth, and sometimes loss has been commandeered by sanctimonious, mostly male politicians, what Louisa Hall has done in Reproduction is really quite marvelous.
She creates a book that positively teems with uneasy life and forces us to look closely at the monstrous challenges of creating a new creature – and she begins with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Our narrator, a novelist – who in no small measure is Louisa Hall herself – is attempting to write about another novelist, Mary Shelley, who dealt with a series of traumatic losses.
But, since the book is indeed made up of disparate parts, the focus shifts as Louisa Hall mines her own experiences -- the devastating loss of a much-wanted child reabsorbed into her body, leaving behind a void on the sonogram screen. The torturous pain of bringing her next pregnancy to term and afterward hemorrhaging uncontrollably. Her final pregnancy and its abnormal result. And the deep aloneness that follows.
Through a female friend – a scientist – who tries to engineer her own child as if she were a mad scientist – not unlike Frankenstein – our narrator also casts her eye on the morality and pitfalls of genetically engineered human babies. The narrator wonders, “What sort of risk was she taking – this insane refusal to abandon a creature to any sort of risk at all.”
All of this plays out in absurd times when a woman who is raped tries to get the morning-after pill and make an appointment for STD testing at Planned Parenthood in Texas, only to find it shut down. And when women are embraced by the medical establishment when they are “with child”, only to be charged onerous fees and jump through hoops to remove a fetus who has died in utero and now represents a threat to a mother’s mental health and to her very life.
The coupling of physical trials with philosophy in a country – indeed, a world – that has lost its bearings makes this book a must-read.
May 30, 2023
I find Louisa Hall's books incredibly compelling and unsettling. I speed through them and at the end wonder, what did I just read? Their ideas stick in my head and create new thoughts, new ideas. This book is the same.
The structure blurs novel and memoir. It's set in the present day, with the backdrop of Covid and school shootings and political debate and laws about abortion. Sometimes too much present-day detail takes away from a book. Here, it worked for me because it drew attention to the vast difference between cultural debate and the lived experiences of women.
I think this book also gets right the insularity of pregnancy, the sort of tunnel vision that forms around reproductive health.
I don't know that I enjoyed this, but goodness I'm glad I read it. Glad it's in the world.
Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.
The structure blurs novel and memoir. It's set in the present day, with the backdrop of Covid and school shootings and political debate and laws about abortion. Sometimes too much present-day detail takes away from a book. Here, it worked for me because it drew attention to the vast difference between cultural debate and the lived experiences of women.
I think this book also gets right the insularity of pregnancy, the sort of tunnel vision that forms around reproductive health.
I don't know that I enjoyed this, but goodness I'm glad I read it. Glad it's in the world.
Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.
June 17, 2023
When I saw that the description of the novel references Shelley's "Frankenstein" I was excited to see how the author went about adding yet another layer of meaning to the whole assemblage, being aware that figures of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster have historically, pun intended, become pregnant with meaning. My reading background I approached the novel through consisted of four texts. Firstly and most broadly, when it comes to the reproduction of human species, I agree to the letter with Patricia MacCormack's The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. Namely, the reproduction should be stopped. Right now and in absolute terms leading to willful extinction. The human must be abolished so the nonhuman beings could flourish.
Second text is Susan Stryker's 1994 "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage" where she textually performs "our abrupt, often jarring transitions between genders", which call into question both essentials understandings of gender as well as academic understanding of genre. Stryker writes: "The transsexual body is an unnatural body. It is the product of medical science. It is a technological construction. It is flesh torn apart and sewn together in a shape other than in which it it was born. In these circumstances, I find a deep affinity between myself as a transsexual woman and the monster in Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'. Like the monster, I am too often perceived as less than fully human due to the means of my embodiment; like the monster's as well, my exclusion from human community fuels a deep and abiding rage in me that I, like monster, direct against the conditions in which I must struggle to exist".
Then, Karen Barad's 2015 text "TransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings" reflecting on Stryker's work and pushing it further into ontological territories of agential realism, which is Barad's term for their conceptualization of nature of nature which is "nonessentialist", that is, very trans and queer. In it, Barad draws on "a disparate set of naturalcultural phenomena from regenerative biology, quantum field theory, and queer and trans theories that include lightning, primordial ooze, frogs, bioelectricity, monstrosity, trans rage, virtual particles, and errant pathways", as well as the figure of Frankenstein's monster. It is nature itself that is "monstrous", stitching together different kinds, species, forms, into a complexly interrelated body/whole.
The novel appears in quite a bit different light when refracted through these texts. It appears as very cisgendered, heterosexual, white, middle class. And harmful. It also appears as rather claustrophobic, where references to Mary Shelley and Frankenstein actually serve to exclude the "monster" creating a cishet immanence of "my husband", the woman and her (un/born) baby to the extent that everything and everyone else are excluded. While the protagonist is at least aware of global warming, police violence, factory farming, she blithely pushes these half-formed thoughts out of her mind focusing exclusively on getting pregnant and, afterwards, on rearing the child. It's as if the exterior world does not exist. And that is exactly the point - the world exists in as much as it enables the reproduction of interiority of white cisheterosexuality (my fourth intertext here is Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, which shows how the figure of the Child shapes the futurity as such casting it as reproductive futurity precluding any other form of temporality and thus sociality). The Frankensteinian "monstrousness" of the world, nature, nonhuman animals, is simply erased or pushed to very far margins of the protagonist's experience. The nonhuman animals have it especially bad in the novel being cast as either pets or as metaphors for absence of thinking, "pure" bodily-ness exemplified in emotion and sensory perception, and lack of agency. All of which is no surprise, given that the production of interiority of reproductive white cisheterosexuality requires ontological differentiation through binarization and hierarchization (interiority-exteriority, human-animal, man-woman, adult-child, white-black, etc.). In that regard, the novel is very successful in showing the horrifying way in which reproductive white cisheterosexuality goes about its business in the world, but I don't think that was the author's intention here. By the same token, it also shows why the change in order to stop the planetary destruction and nonhuman exploitation is going to be very hard to achieve, if not impossible, making texts such as The Ahuman Manifesto all the more precious.
Second text is Susan Stryker's 1994 "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage" where she textually performs "our abrupt, often jarring transitions between genders", which call into question both essentials understandings of gender as well as academic understanding of genre. Stryker writes: "The transsexual body is an unnatural body. It is the product of medical science. It is a technological construction. It is flesh torn apart and sewn together in a shape other than in which it it was born. In these circumstances, I find a deep affinity between myself as a transsexual woman and the monster in Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'. Like the monster, I am too often perceived as less than fully human due to the means of my embodiment; like the monster's as well, my exclusion from human community fuels a deep and abiding rage in me that I, like monster, direct against the conditions in which I must struggle to exist".
Then, Karen Barad's 2015 text "TransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings" reflecting on Stryker's work and pushing it further into ontological territories of agential realism, which is Barad's term for their conceptualization of nature of nature which is "nonessentialist", that is, very trans and queer. In it, Barad draws on "a disparate set of naturalcultural phenomena from regenerative biology, quantum field theory, and queer and trans theories that include lightning, primordial ooze, frogs, bioelectricity, monstrosity, trans rage, virtual particles, and errant pathways", as well as the figure of Frankenstein's monster. It is nature itself that is "monstrous", stitching together different kinds, species, forms, into a complexly interrelated body/whole.
The novel appears in quite a bit different light when refracted through these texts. It appears as very cisgendered, heterosexual, white, middle class. And harmful. It also appears as rather claustrophobic, where references to Mary Shelley and Frankenstein actually serve to exclude the "monster" creating a cishet immanence of "my husband", the woman and her (un/born) baby to the extent that everything and everyone else are excluded. While the protagonist is at least aware of global warming, police violence, factory farming, she blithely pushes these half-formed thoughts out of her mind focusing exclusively on getting pregnant and, afterwards, on rearing the child. It's as if the exterior world does not exist. And that is exactly the point - the world exists in as much as it enables the reproduction of interiority of white cisheterosexuality (my fourth intertext here is Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, which shows how the figure of the Child shapes the futurity as such casting it as reproductive futurity precluding any other form of temporality and thus sociality). The Frankensteinian "monstrousness" of the world, nature, nonhuman animals, is simply erased or pushed to very far margins of the protagonist's experience. The nonhuman animals have it especially bad in the novel being cast as either pets or as metaphors for absence of thinking, "pure" bodily-ness exemplified in emotion and sensory perception, and lack of agency. All of which is no surprise, given that the production of interiority of reproductive white cisheterosexuality requires ontological differentiation through binarization and hierarchization (interiority-exteriority, human-animal, man-woman, adult-child, white-black, etc.). In that regard, the novel is very successful in showing the horrifying way in which reproductive white cisheterosexuality goes about its business in the world, but I don't think that was the author's intention here. By the same token, it also shows why the change in order to stop the planetary destruction and nonhuman exploitation is going to be very hard to achieve, if not impossible, making texts such as The Ahuman Manifesto all the more precious.
May 8, 2025
The best (and only) novel about pregnancy and childbirth I've ever read.
March 31, 2025
expectations ruined this one for me. can't say there's anything exactly wrong with it, my expectations were just completely different from what i got so it gets the safe, neutral 3 stars
October 11, 2023
Great vivid description of pregnancy, labor and postpartum hemorrhage.
August 31, 2023
Our MC relays her challenges in getting pregnant, and ties that into Mary Shelley's life and the idea of creation. She meets a friend, and her friend tells her about what's been going on in her life, and she starts to think about how technology is involved in human reproduction. I found reading this to be really soothing, almost. My fave book by her is still Speak, but this was a terrific follow up.
April 29, 2023
Goddamn spectacular
February 14, 2024
Completely exceptional. I’d recommend it to anyone who has ever been born.
June 4, 2025
I have no words for this. I cried. Multiple times. To be a woman in this day and age. En nu moet ik hier nog een paper over schrijven, hoe ga ik dat doen?
This is one of my all time favourite books, every single page is dog-eared.
This is one of my all time favourite books, every single page is dog-eared.
June 28, 2023
I can tell the author is a poet - this book is gorgeous and easy to read in one or a few sittings. I really appreciated the honest depictions of pregnancy loss and gain.
But it's an odd work. Like many poems, I can't tell whether it's memoir or fiction, or which parts are which. Does it matter? Maybe so, if there's a message or theses here, which for all the beauty, I'm not sure there is. Also there's very little Mary Shelley - the Frankenstein theme gets lost in the weeds. Needs more cohesion.
But it's an odd work. Like many poems, I can't tell whether it's memoir or fiction, or which parts are which. Does it matter? Maybe so, if there's a message or theses here, which for all the beauty, I'm not sure there is. Also there's very little Mary Shelley - the Frankenstein theme gets lost in the weeds. Needs more cohesion.
August 1, 2024
I've read other fiction and non-fiction that touches on the weirdness, monstrousness and pure body horror of pregnancy, but nothing that goes for it quite as much as Louisa Hall's fourth novel. Reproduction starts conventionally, narrated in first-person by an unnamed woman who is trying to write a novel about Mary Shelley when she miscarries her first pregnancy. Our narrator immediately ricochets towards Shelley's own traumatic history of child loss, intertwining it with her creation of Frankenstein, the first and most famous mad-scientist-creates-a-monster novel. But for me, this really became interesting when the narrator gets pregnant again. One long section viscerally evokes her experience of labour, where she almost bleeds out; after she gives birth to a healthy daughter, her next pregnancy brings only more horrors. Meanwhile, her friend Anna is trying to have a child on her own via IVF, but time seems to have run out for her after her last embryos don't prove viable and her egg reserves plummet. One of the things that most impressed me about Reproduction is about how it challenges our divisions between 'natural' and 'unnatural', both through genre - this is a novel about motherhood, like so many, but just so slightly, satisfyingly skewed on its axis - and through the way Hall writes about gestation. In one striking scene, our (naturally) pregnant narrator talks to a pregnant Anna, who has tampered with creation to conceive - but it's Anna's baby, we eventually learn, that is anatomically 'normal', whereas the narrator's baby, with XXY triploidy, has 'wide-set eyes, a cleft palate, webbed fingers, webbed toes' and cannot survive. Nevertheless, Hall writes not only about the pain but also the beauty of early parenthood, how parents and baby are temporarily in 'a house on the moon', watching 'the old planet' from some way away. In this other world, strange things become possible. Haunting. 4.5 stars.
May 4, 2023
Pro-choice activists galvanized by recent court and legislative actions targeting abortion (and ultimately, presumably, birth control) could do worse in making their case than citing Louisa Hall's "Reproduction," which depicts in graphically horrifying detail the myriad risks facing expectant mothers. Molar pregnancies, in which a tumor develops as a result of a nonviable pregnancy; triploid babies, in which a developing fetus has 69 total chromosomes instead of the usual 46; deliveries that go on for hours and hours; miscarriages with oceans of bleeding, the scenarios are set forth to such horrifying effect in Hall’s novel that they made me wonder why any woman would ever want to become pregnant, particularly now amid a hidebound conservative sentiment which demands that women see their pregnancies through no matter if they came about through rape or incest or if they might make for life-threatening risks. (Particularly egregious in this regard for me is the insistence of some legislators that young pregnant girls, some not even old enough to fully understand what’s happening to them, take their fetuses to term.)
Not, of course, that most pregnancies don’t go perfectly smoothly with the mothers positively thrilled with their babies and in absolute awe of the wonder of creation, even as they might also be fully aware of the multitude of things that could have gone wrong and made for considerably less felicitous outcomes for mother or child. Like Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein story in that regard, pregnancies can be the occasion for both awe and apprehension, and in fact Shelley’s story features prominently in Hall’s novel, in which her narrator, who’s also a writer, thinks to write about Shelley, who herself suffered pregnancy misfortunes as she penned her now-iconic creature story. Indeed, the circumstances of the composition of Shelley’s story are what most drew me to Hall's novel, with my being a writer myself, but in the end, as I’ve indicated, Hall’s novel is less about Shelley’s story than a chronicle of the misfortunes suffered by Hall’s narrator in her striving to become pregnant.
More than just a chronicling of her particular circumstances, though, Hall’s novel is also a full-on treatment of reproduction, both in artistic composition or in human development, including an examination of the ethics of harvesting eggs and embryo selection. The latter, indeed, makes for the closest the novel comes to a truly conventional story arc when an acquaintance of the narrator who has become pregnant through such procedures is fearful of what might be going on inside her and asks the narrator to accompany her on a literal middle-of-the-night sonogram check of her situation. Which in another novel or thriller movie might have made for a classically climactic moment, with a crescendo of music as the two get closer and closer to learning the truth, but here is presented straightforwardly enough, with no great dramatic fanfare, that a reader expecting a more usual dramatic climax might be in for some disappointment.
Nevertheless, for all that it might not be the conventual thriller or comforting fare that some readers might have preferred, Hall’s novel is to my mind a much-needed dose of reality in these fantasy-ridden times of ours in which millions of Americans choose to believe that a massive fraud of almost unimaginable proportions was perpetrated in the last presidential election or that the Jan 6 assault on the Capitol wasn’t what we all saw with our own eyes or, on the health front, that a life-saving vaccine wasn't the boon that it was but some kind of nefarious mind-control plot, or, perhaps most egregiously of all, that in instances of incest or rape, some sort of natural mechanism in a woman's body recognizes that something bad has occurred and kicks in to prevent a pregnancy.
Not, of course, that most pregnancies don’t go perfectly smoothly with the mothers positively thrilled with their babies and in absolute awe of the wonder of creation, even as they might also be fully aware of the multitude of things that could have gone wrong and made for considerably less felicitous outcomes for mother or child. Like Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein story in that regard, pregnancies can be the occasion for both awe and apprehension, and in fact Shelley’s story features prominently in Hall’s novel, in which her narrator, who’s also a writer, thinks to write about Shelley, who herself suffered pregnancy misfortunes as she penned her now-iconic creature story. Indeed, the circumstances of the composition of Shelley’s story are what most drew me to Hall's novel, with my being a writer myself, but in the end, as I’ve indicated, Hall’s novel is less about Shelley’s story than a chronicle of the misfortunes suffered by Hall’s narrator in her striving to become pregnant.
More than just a chronicling of her particular circumstances, though, Hall’s novel is also a full-on treatment of reproduction, both in artistic composition or in human development, including an examination of the ethics of harvesting eggs and embryo selection. The latter, indeed, makes for the closest the novel comes to a truly conventional story arc when an acquaintance of the narrator who has become pregnant through such procedures is fearful of what might be going on inside her and asks the narrator to accompany her on a literal middle-of-the-night sonogram check of her situation. Which in another novel or thriller movie might have made for a classically climactic moment, with a crescendo of music as the two get closer and closer to learning the truth, but here is presented straightforwardly enough, with no great dramatic fanfare, that a reader expecting a more usual dramatic climax might be in for some disappointment.
Nevertheless, for all that it might not be the conventual thriller or comforting fare that some readers might have preferred, Hall’s novel is to my mind a much-needed dose of reality in these fantasy-ridden times of ours in which millions of Americans choose to believe that a massive fraud of almost unimaginable proportions was perpetrated in the last presidential election or that the Jan 6 assault on the Capitol wasn’t what we all saw with our own eyes or, on the health front, that a life-saving vaccine wasn't the boon that it was but some kind of nefarious mind-control plot, or, perhaps most egregiously of all, that in instances of incest or rape, some sort of natural mechanism in a woman's body recognizes that something bad has occurred and kicks in to prevent a pregnancy.
December 18, 2023
Reproduction review
If Frankenstein was an abomination for trying to create life out of death, what does that say about women who continue to try to get pregnant and create life after miscarriages, abortions, nearly fatal complications during childbirth, gruesome hemorrhages days later; after they’re told they’re too old, their wombs are too inhospitable, their eggs are not viable; when they look around at the political, environmental, social degradation of the world we inhabit and can’t say with certainty they’re bringing life in to a bright future, nor even a guaranteed future at all. I loved the discussion of “natural” birthing— whether that’s how you conceive, what knowledge you choose to screen for in the embryo, choosing not to get an epidural because you want a “natural” birth, even though being in a hospital with doctors isn’t “natural.” What is “natural” in 2023 when we have so much science, technology, artificiality at our fingertips? I loved that.
“It was as though she imagined life could be free from risk, if you had enough scientific acumen, fi you had the resources. And having reached that conclusion, she had decided that to have a child and expose them to risk was immoral. What sort of reverse Frankenstein approach was she taking, I wondered, this insane refusal to abandon a creature to any sort of risk at all, this crazed determination to protect a child from any possible imperfect outcome?”
I got a bit bored in the middle section when Anna was introduced, but eventually I understood her significance, and I think that was a valuable course for the book to take. But for awhile there I wasn’t sold on Anna’s place in the story and wanted to get back to our narrator and her child.
It’s a really beautifully written book about creation and the choices/sacrifices you have to make when deciding whether to create… whether that’s a child or a story or a monster (or all three perhaps?). The parallels between Mary Shelley as mother of the Frankenstein story and mother to three children, only one who would survive adolescence. This book is rife with various degrees of loss and hurt, and it can be really tricky to read at times in its raw depictions of trying to be a woman in a world where women are defined by their relationships to men and their children.
This line rocked my world during the lengthy childbirth scene, when Hall is talking about how lonely and isolating the experience is, despite being surrounded by people in the delivery room: “not the loneliness of that pain, not the chaos of it. No one believed that the depressions women sometimes sank into in the months after their babies were born were the result of those long stretches of pain in which they’d been absolutely abandoned.”
If Frankenstein was an abomination for trying to create life out of death, what does that say about women who continue to try to get pregnant and create life after miscarriages, abortions, nearly fatal complications during childbirth, gruesome hemorrhages days later; after they’re told they’re too old, their wombs are too inhospitable, their eggs are not viable; when they look around at the political, environmental, social degradation of the world we inhabit and can’t say with certainty they’re bringing life in to a bright future, nor even a guaranteed future at all. I loved the discussion of “natural” birthing— whether that’s how you conceive, what knowledge you choose to screen for in the embryo, choosing not to get an epidural because you want a “natural” birth, even though being in a hospital with doctors isn’t “natural.” What is “natural” in 2023 when we have so much science, technology, artificiality at our fingertips? I loved that.
“It was as though she imagined life could be free from risk, if you had enough scientific acumen, fi you had the resources. And having reached that conclusion, she had decided that to have a child and expose them to risk was immoral. What sort of reverse Frankenstein approach was she taking, I wondered, this insane refusal to abandon a creature to any sort of risk at all, this crazed determination to protect a child from any possible imperfect outcome?”
I got a bit bored in the middle section when Anna was introduced, but eventually I understood her significance, and I think that was a valuable course for the book to take. But for awhile there I wasn’t sold on Anna’s place in the story and wanted to get back to our narrator and her child.
It’s a really beautifully written book about creation and the choices/sacrifices you have to make when deciding whether to create… whether that’s a child or a story or a monster (or all three perhaps?). The parallels between Mary Shelley as mother of the Frankenstein story and mother to three children, only one who would survive adolescence. This book is rife with various degrees of loss and hurt, and it can be really tricky to read at times in its raw depictions of trying to be a woman in a world where women are defined by their relationships to men and their children.
This line rocked my world during the lengthy childbirth scene, when Hall is talking about how lonely and isolating the experience is, despite being surrounded by people in the delivery room: “not the loneliness of that pain, not the chaos of it. No one believed that the depressions women sometimes sank into in the months after their babies were born were the result of those long stretches of pain in which they’d been absolutely abandoned.”
August 15, 2024
References to politics and to how bad things are outside of the safe domestic space of the family irritated me--don't pepper your book with political references for brownie points or to appear enlightened or whatever it is. Trump is bad for the bourgeois liberal white American. We know, we've only been told this a thousand times. It says something that plenty of Americans are suffering and America makes a lot of the world suffer but for some people suffering apparently didn't begin until Trump. That says a lot about the bourgeois liberal living in the belly of the imperialist beast! Anyway. Annoyingly smug take on the naturalness of motherhood or whatever it is. Nothing really worthwhile explored re: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or monsters in general, and I had no idea what Anna was even doing in this book. A character that just wandered around, waiting to find her purpose. Two stars because some of the writing on pregnancy, labour, and childbirth was quite vivid, unnverving, and shocking ... The idea of the mother as monster is also floated very briefly and then dropped. These are the things that would have made the book something to remember.
August 23, 2023
Phenomenal.
October 16, 2023
Spellbinding and incredibly creative. I’ve never read anything like this. Not an easy read, but I couldn’t put it down.
November 14, 2023
First, a thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read a copy of this eARC.
I honestly don’t know what to say about this book. It’s not that I don’t HAVE anything to say, or that I didn’t feel anything, but more that I feel like I cannot put to words the experience of reading this book.
It feels so deeply intimate and personal, I felt as if I were reading a diary, stealing glances in the dark.
On the other hand, I don’t think this book is meant to be secretive; I think one of the points of this book is the silent suffering of those who don’t have “typical” or “happy” experiences with pregnancy… which is, by all accounts in society, supposed to be the magical, wonderful, beautiful occasion.
In some ways as well I felt almost unprepared or not ready to read this book, having not experienced pregnancy myself. I’m not saying that was the point or intent of the book, just my own personal musings as I try to unravel my feelings now that I’ve finished this book.
I suppose you’ll just have to read it for yourself and see how you feel, in the end.
I honestly don’t know what to say about this book. It’s not that I don’t HAVE anything to say, or that I didn’t feel anything, but more that I feel like I cannot put to words the experience of reading this book.
It feels so deeply intimate and personal, I felt as if I were reading a diary, stealing glances in the dark.
On the other hand, I don’t think this book is meant to be secretive; I think one of the points of this book is the silent suffering of those who don’t have “typical” or “happy” experiences with pregnancy… which is, by all accounts in society, supposed to be the magical, wonderful, beautiful occasion.
In some ways as well I felt almost unprepared or not ready to read this book, having not experienced pregnancy myself. I’m not saying that was the point or intent of the book, just my own personal musings as I try to unravel my feelings now that I’ve finished this book.
I suppose you’ll just have to read it for yourself and see how you feel, in the end.
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