Eleven Hours
Pamela Erens
(Author)
Description
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.
Product Details
Price
$15.95
$14.83
Publisher
Tin House Books
Publish Date
May 03, 2016
Pages
176
Dimensions
5.1 X 0.5 X 7.7 inches | 0.4 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781941040294
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
PAMELA ERENS is the author of Matasha, a novel for readers age 10 to 14, and the adult novels The Virgins, Eleven Hours, and The Understory. Erens's books have been named finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her essays and criticism have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
Reviews
Erens . . . [creates] one of the most realistic and harrowing portrayals of birth you are likely to encounter in fiction. She has also written an indelible portrait of two women coming to terms with desire, fear, crushing losses and fragile joys that have carved their lives, and who knows what it means to fight every hour, every minute, to take another breath.
Exhilarating novel . . .The writing is candid without being sensational, detailed without being clinical. This admirable novel reminds us that even when childbirth is overseen by caring professionals in state-of-the-art facilities, it still arrives on waves of blood.
I loved Eleven Hours. In this gorgeous, haunting, slender novel, Pamela Erens creates an intimacy that is all-encompassing.
Pamela Erens achieves the extraordinary in her third novel, Eleven Hours: a visceral story about an intensely painful experience that manages to be an intense pleasure to read.--Boston Globe
Powerful--aesthetically and viscerally.
upends conventional notions of motherhood while reminding us of its universal mystery.--Signature Reads, Best Books of the Year
Erens' vivid, unflinching portrayal of childbirth . . . read so powerfully, and offer something so infrequently depicted in literature . . .
Erens is such a gifted writer that in this slender novel she is able to magically transform the experience of two women - one a mother in labor, the other a nurse - into urgent, suspenseful drama. From the first sentence - ''No, the girl says, she will not wear the fetal monitoring belt'' - Erens seizes control of her intense, provocative and deeply rewarding high-wire act of a novel.--National Review, Five Hot Books
Erens makes a fresh contribution. Along with creating original and nuanced characters, she pits duality against intense isolation. . .
Deeply moving and radiantly written, Eleven Hours is a gorgeous, harrowing, and intensely urgent novel. Pamela Erens is a mesmerizingly smart and powerful writer--I can't stop thinking about this book.--Molly Antopol, author of THE UNAMERICANS
With Eleven Hours Pamela Erens solidifies her standing as one of the most gifted fiction writers we have. This exploration of a woman's time in labor is at once gritty and graceful, harrowing and compassionate. It is no small challenge to make a subject as old as life itself feel newly observed and newly revelatory, but Erens does exactly that and more. Bravo!--Robin Black, author of LIFE DRAWING
Eleven Hours is a taut, spare, and gorgeous, a slow beautiful spinning of tension and story that embraces two women whose lives interlock at the moment in which life enters the world: birth. Pamela Erens's prose manages to be both meditative and urgent.--Roxana Robinson, author of SPARTA
I could. not. put this one down.
Erens' story is so tightly packed, so fluid, I couldn't stop chasing the next word, the next sentence, through to the end.I don't have children and I don''t plan to; it's not for me. And still, even unexpectedly, Eleven Hours really resonated with me. It's a welcome addition to the too-tiny pool of pregnancy & childbirth-themed literature, though echoes into so much more than that as well.
As Lore works and struggles through labor, every detail of which I felt I could touch with both hands, she also navigates human connection--how the are made, held, broken. And as Franckline, her nurse/midwife, travels through this alongside Lore, the connections and bonds between women, the temporary one between these two women--are lovingly knit, inspected, defined. Eleven Hours is like a lullaby, speaking often of tragedy but in the gentle, rocking tune of a mother's voice. This is another one from Tin House that I will be keeping tucked in near my heart.--Finch Alder Hogue, Vintage Books
Exhilarating novel . . .The writing is candid without being sensational, detailed without being clinical. This admirable novel reminds us that even when childbirth is overseen by caring professionals in state-of-the-art facilities, it still arrives on waves of blood.
I loved Eleven Hours. In this gorgeous, haunting, slender novel, Pamela Erens creates an intimacy that is all-encompassing.
Pamela Erens achieves the extraordinary in her third novel, Eleven Hours: a visceral story about an intensely painful experience that manages to be an intense pleasure to read.--Boston Globe
Powerful--aesthetically and viscerally.
upends conventional notions of motherhood while reminding us of its universal mystery.--Signature Reads, Best Books of the Year
Erens' vivid, unflinching portrayal of childbirth . . . read so powerfully, and offer something so infrequently depicted in literature . . .
Erens is such a gifted writer that in this slender novel she is able to magically transform the experience of two women - one a mother in labor, the other a nurse - into urgent, suspenseful drama. From the first sentence - ''No, the girl says, she will not wear the fetal monitoring belt'' - Erens seizes control of her intense, provocative and deeply rewarding high-wire act of a novel.--National Review, Five Hot Books
Erens makes a fresh contribution. Along with creating original and nuanced characters, she pits duality against intense isolation. . .
Deeply moving and radiantly written, Eleven Hours is a gorgeous, harrowing, and intensely urgent novel. Pamela Erens is a mesmerizingly smart and powerful writer--I can't stop thinking about this book.--Molly Antopol, author of THE UNAMERICANS
With Eleven Hours Pamela Erens solidifies her standing as one of the most gifted fiction writers we have. This exploration of a woman's time in labor is at once gritty and graceful, harrowing and compassionate. It is no small challenge to make a subject as old as life itself feel newly observed and newly revelatory, but Erens does exactly that and more. Bravo!--Robin Black, author of LIFE DRAWING
Eleven Hours is a taut, spare, and gorgeous, a slow beautiful spinning of tension and story that embraces two women whose lives interlock at the moment in which life enters the world: birth. Pamela Erens's prose manages to be both meditative and urgent.--Roxana Robinson, author of SPARTA
I could. not. put this one down.
Erens' story is so tightly packed, so fluid, I couldn't stop chasing the next word, the next sentence, through to the end.I don't have children and I don''t plan to; it's not for me. And still, even unexpectedly, Eleven Hours really resonated with me. It's a welcome addition to the too-tiny pool of pregnancy & childbirth-themed literature, though echoes into so much more than that as well.
As Lore works and struggles through labor, every detail of which I felt I could touch with both hands, she also navigates human connection--how the are made, held, broken. And as Franckline, her nurse/midwife, travels through this alongside Lore, the connections and bonds between women, the temporary one between these two women--are lovingly knit, inspected, defined. Eleven Hours is like a lullaby, speaking often of tragedy but in the gentle, rocking tune of a mother's voice. This is another one from Tin House that I will be keeping tucked in near my heart.--Finch Alder Hogue, Vintage Books
