Eleven Hours
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3.6 • 14 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An NPR Best Book of 2016
A New Yorker Book We Loved in 2016
Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2016
The Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2016
Flavorwire Most Anticipated Book
From the critically acclaimed author of The Virgins, Eleven Hours is an intimate exploration of the physical and mental challenges of childbirth, told with unremitting suspense and astonishing beauty.
Lore arrives at the hospital alone—no husband, no partner, no friends. Her birth plan is explicit: she wants no fetal monitor, no IV, no epidural. Franckline, a nurse in the maternity ward—herself on the verge of showing—is patient with the young woman. She knows what it’s like to worry that something might go wrong, and she understands the distress when it does. She knows as well as anyone the severe challenge of childbirth, what it does to the mind and the body.
Eleven Hours is the story of two soon-to-be mothers who, in the midst of a difficult labor, are forced to reckon with their pasts and re-create their futures. Lore must disentangle herself from a love triangle; Franckline must move beyond past traumas to accept the life that’s waiting for her. Pamela Erens moves seamlessly between their begrudging partnership and the memories evoked by so intense an experience: for Lore, of the father of her child and her former best friend; for Franckline, of the family in Haiti from which she’s exiled. At turns urgent and lyrical, Erens’s novel is a visceral portrait of childbirth, and a vivid rendering of the way we approach motherhood—with fear and joy, anguish and awe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Early one wintry morning, Lore, an elementary school speech therapist who is nine-months pregnant, enters a New York City hospital alone. Her contractions have started, and though she isn't terribly far along, her assigned nurse, Franckline, quickly sets her up in the maternity ward, where the duo ride out the long process of Lore's labor together.As the hours pass, the women sit in Lore's room and walk the hospital halls, and snippets of their histories come to light including Franckline's time as a midwife's helper in her native Haiti and Lore's difficult childhood, as well as the complicated love triangle that resulted in her solo trip to the hospital. In addition, it isn't long before Franckline's own early pregnancy is revealed. After several miscarriages, however, Franckline is afraid to tell her husband of her condition until she is certain her baby will survive. Written with incredible clarity, this third novel from Erens (The Virgins) is a wonder, shifting between two protagonists with ease to tell a deeply personal narrative of childbirth, complete with tension, horror, and deep, mature emotion. This novel does not sentimentalize the delivery of a child but rather examines the surprise mental and physical that accompanies it. Labor stories are as old as time, but Erens's novel feels incredibly fresh and vivid. An outstanding accomplishment.
