Reproduction, Louisa Hall
Reproduction, Louisa Hall
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Reproduction
A Novel

Author: Louisa Hall

Narrator: Stacey Glemboski

Unabridged: 6 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 06/13/2023

Synopsis

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.

About Louisa Hall

Louisa Hall grew up in Philadelphia.  She is the author of the novels Speak and The Carriage House, and her poems have been published in The New Republic, Southwest Review, and other journals.  She is a professor at the University of Iowa, and the Western Writer in Residence at Montana State University.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lark on 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......more

Goodreads review by Kim on 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 consciousne......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on February 03, 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......more

Goodreads review by Matthew Ted on March 07, 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 a......more

Goodreads review by Bianca (Away) on 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, stayin......more

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