Reproduction, by Louisa Hall

Louisa Hall examines reproduction, the treatment of women's bodies and technology's unintended consequences.

The unnamed narrator of Reproduction begins by telling the reader she had meant to write a novel about Mary Shelley and her novel Frankenstein, but abandoned the project. It was 2018 and she was pregnant for the first time, suffering nausea and disturbing dreams. But parts of Mary Shelley's story “detached themselves from the page and clung to my life” and so she continued to ruminate on the subject. 

Reproduction is American writer Louisa Hall's fourth novel. It's divided into three sections: conception, birth and science fiction. It reads as autobiographical – some of the things that happen in it you can't make up – but Hall's prose manages to keep an elegant distance from her visceral subject matter, giving the text the formality and tone of fiction. This is quite a feat, considering how raw some parts of Reproduction are.

The narrator describes a particularly difficult pregnancy – sickness, nausea, pain – and its aftermath, an almost life threatening case of hemorrhaging. In between there are miscarriages and further misery. Hall doesn't flinch from giving the reader all the details, often gorey. She describes pregnancy as like living on a totally different planet. The feeling is one of intense aloneness – even her husband is no use, failing to provide enough empathy and understanding.

The third and longest part of the book, titled “Science Fiction”, concentrates on medical interventions in pregnancy and bioethical questions on genetic engineering. The narrator's friend, Anna, is a scientist whose work involves genetics, and when she becomes pregnant, with technological help, she starts making some interventions on her own pregnancy which are quite frightening. Weaved through this narrative of horror-like reproduction is a discussion of Mary Shelley and what influenced her to write Frankenstein. Readers might not know the biographical details of Shelley's life, the miscarriages and death of three of her children in infancy, and how deep her grief must have been. Louisa Hall speculates on Shelley's life and what could have caused her to write Frankenstein and her other science fiction novel, The Last Man.
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A visceral and confronting novel that raises many questions -  emotional, legal and ethical - about the darker side of birth and pregnancy.  

Reproduction, by Louisa Hall. Published by Scribner. $32.99

NOV23