Synopses & Reviews
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 pain 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 friendship and the memories evoked by so intense an experience. 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.
Review
"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
Review
"An unflinching look at pregnancy and childbirth....Powerful—aesthetically and viscerally." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Childbirth, this uniquely female form of heroism, is rarely documented in our literature, and I’ve never seen it rendered with the extraordinary insight, urgency, and potency of Eleven Hours. Every dilation and contraction of feeling is recorded, and Erens evokes the layered experience of living in a body—its tides of memory, sensation, and emotion—like no other writer I know." Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
Review
"Pamela Erens has given us a dream that becomes
a nightmare and is restored again to dream, a vital,
microcosmic, fundamental, riveting, distilled illumination of
our most profound and misunderstood passage, the rite at
which every reader can marvel: someone once did that for
me. As essential a novel as they come." Elisa Albert, author of After Birth
Synopsis
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. "
Synopsis
- An NPR Best Book of 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.
"
Synopsis
- 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.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Pamela Erens’s second
novel, The Virgins, was
a New York Times Book
Review Editor’s Choice and
was named a Best Book of
2013 by the New Yorker, the
New Republic, Library Journal,
and Salon. The novel
was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award for the
best book of fiction published in 2013. Pamela’s debut
novel, The Understory, was a finalist for the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize and the William Saroyan International
Prize for Writing. Her essays, articles, and reviews have
appeared in publications such as Elle, Vogue, the New
York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Millions.
She lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.