'Reproduction' by Ian Williams is an experimental family saga that spans generations, exploring the complexities of relationships and unconventional family structures. The novel follows the lives of characters like Felicia, Edgar, Army, Oliver, Heather, and Riot, delving into themes of immigration, choices, and living with consequences. The book is uniquely structured, with four parts that jump through time and perspectives, incorporating elements like short stories, poems, and fragmented narratives.

Characters:

The characters are complex but often unlikeable, revealing the challenges around gender roles and family responsibilities.

Writing/Prose:

The prose is experimental and diverse, employing unconventional narrative techniques that may distract from the content.

Plot/Storyline:

The narrative explores unconventional family dynamics and the impact of relationships formed out of necessity, spanning several decades.

Setting:

The setting covers various locations in Toronto and reflects the immigrant experience across different decades.

Pacing:

The pacing is inconsistent, with slow sections causing the narrative to feel drawn out.

Before she died her mother was prickly. Before her mother died she was. One more time. Before her mother died she, her mother, was prickly. One more time. Before her mother died she, her mother, prick...

Notes:

The novel 'Reproduction' was written by Ian Williams and won the 2019 Giller Prize.

The story follows Felicia, a 19-year-old black immigrant from a small Caribbean island, and Edgar, a much older affluent white man.

Felicia and Edgar first meet in a hospital where their mothers are patients.

Their relationship leads to Felicia becoming pregnant, and they form a non-traditional family unit.

The novel has a unique structure divided into four parts, each exploring different aspects of reproduction.

Part one uses 23 paired chapters, part two expands to four characters over 16 chapters, and part three grows to 256 smaller sections.

The writing style is experimental, including varying formats like song lyrics, stream-of-consciousness, and multilingual components.

The characters are often unlikable, with themes of emotional manipulation and the burdens women carry in relationships.

Felicia has to navigate the challenges of being a single mother with no support from Edgar, who neglects his responsibilities.

The narrative examines unconventional family dynamics and how relationships can form through proximity rather than choice.

Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings

The content warnings for Reproduction include themes of sexual manipulation, emotional abuse, socioeconomic disparities, and complex family dynamics.

From The Publisher:

WINNER OF THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE AND CBC'S BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR, this best-selling debut novel is an energetically told, funny, and moving book about how strangers become family.

A JUNE 2020 INDIE NEXT GREAT READ

Reproduction tells a crooked love story in which love takes strange, winding paths and grows in a context shaped by community, family, longstanding friendships, and fleeting interactions that leave their mark on us forever.

Felicia, a nineteen-year-old student from a West Indian family, and Edgar, the lazy-minded and impetuous heir of a wealthy German family, meet by chance when their ailing mothers are assigned the same hospital room. After the death of Felicia's mother and the recovery of Edgar's, Felicia drops out of high-school and takes a job as caregiver to Edgar's mother. The odd-couple relationship between Edgar and Felicia, ripe with miscommunications, misunderstandings, and reprisals for perceived and real offenses, has some unexpected results.

Years later, Felicia's son Armistice-"Army" for short-is a teenager fixated on a variety of get-rich-quick schemes that are as comic as they are indicative of the immigrant son's fear of falling through the cracks. When Edgar re-enters Felicia's life at a typically (for him) inopportune moment, the book's exhilarating final act is set in the motion and the full import of its title is revealed.

"This gorgeous novel vibrates with life…Stylistically inventive and narratively compelling, Reproduction is stunning."-Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love

"One of the most energetic, lively, funny, and sad novels of the year."-Quill & Quire, Book of the Year

"Williams's unsparing view on the past's repetition is heartrending. This ambitious experiment yields worthwhile results."-Publishers Weekly

"Witty, playful, and disarmingly offbeat-even as it hums with serious themes."-The Toronto Star

"Polyphonic and big-hearted."-Electric Literature

"A family saga like no other, with vivid characters and spectacular narrative twists . . . What makes it all work is Williams's exquisite writing and his willingness to take risk with form. This is a fresh and exciting literary voice."-NOW Toronto, Book of the Year

"Both funny and poignant, powerful and playful."-The Calgary Herald

"Reproduction is an inventive and tender portrait of family life in all its forms."-Rabble

"Reproduction's genius is its weaponized empathy, the precision-etched intensity of Williams' gritty, witty, wholly unsentimental exploration of the collision of human hearts and the messy aftermath."-Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach and Son of a Trickster

"Reminiscent of Miriam Toews's novel All My Puny Sorrows in its balance between grief and humour."-Quill & Quire

"Williams's compassion for his characters transforms them from ordinary beings into uncommon souls. We know these people: their flaws, their foibles and their fuck ups. We recognize them because we share the same vagaries of living, wherever we are born."-Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love

"The startling brilliance of Ian Williams stems from his restlessness with form. His ceaseless creativity in sussing out the right patterning of story, the right vernacular nuance, the right diagram and deftly dropped reference-all in service of vividly illuminating the intermingled comedy and trauma of family."-David Chariandy, author of Brother

"Reproduction is a brilliant modernist symphony, a truly unique blend of character, voice, sound, and style that shows the many different ways family can be made, and what the concept of family actually means in diverse contexts. A surprising, intriguing, and moving novel by a proven talent."-Marion Abbott, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore, Berkeley CA

"A daring and funny intergenerational family saga . . . Williams, a poet, brings a thrilling linguistic verve to this already-gripping story, and his restless experimental prose makes Reproduction fly off the page."-Danny Caine, Raven Bookstore, Lawrence KS

What can you read after
Reproduction?

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Reproduction

Ian Williams

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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings

From The Publisher:

What can you read after Reproduction?

What can you read after
Reproduction?