Welcome to Litsy!

For readers of Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill, and Doireann N� Ghr�ofa, 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