�Compelling, elegant and bitingly smart.� Nell Stevens, author of Briefly, A Delicious Life
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.
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