Reproduction

A Frankenstein for the twenty-first century 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 1816.

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?
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Devastating and joyful, elegant and exacting, Reproduction is a powerful reminder of the hazards and the rewards involved in creating new life.

About the Author

Louisa Hall is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Iowa and the author of the critically acclaimed novels Reproduction, Trinity, and Speak. Her poems have been published in The New Republic, Southwest Review, and other journals, and she is the recipient of grants from Yaddo, Macdowell, and The T.S. Eliot Foundation. She lives in Iowa City with her family.

Reviews

"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

"What a gift this book is to anyone on the journey to motherhood. So much pain and heartache can surface with this choice, and I'm thankful to Louisa Hall for not shying away from that." ―Szilvia Monar, author of The Nursery

"At the heart of Louisa Hall’s brainily visceral new novel is a reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a book whose uncanny energy is forged in the crucible of reproduction... she writes the body with poetic clarity and beauty." ―Lara Feigel, Guardian

Dimensions: 13 x 1.36 x 19.8 cm