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A woman considers pregnancy, motherhood, and the nature of female relationships in this profound and provocative novel.
Twelve weeks pregnant for the first time, Anna speaks to her sister on the other side of the country and learns she has just miscarried her second child. As this loss strains their bond and complications with Anna's own pregnancy emerge, her tenuous steps towards motherhood are shadowed and illuminated by the women she meets along the way, whose stories of the children they have had, or longed for, or lost, crowd in.
The Long Answer is a stunning novel of secrets kept, and secrets shared. Deeply empathetic and hugely absorbing, it unravels the intimate dynamics of female friendship, sisterhood, motherhood and grief, and the ways that women are bound together and pulled apart by their shared and contrasting experiences of pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and infertility.
"An introspective, psychologically astute, and engaging debut…a heart-rending tale that blurs the line between fiction and reality…A startling meditation on grief and family and betrayal and the stories we tell about ourselves." – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A compelling, often-heartbreaking tale of belonging, loss, and rebirth. Looking beyond pregnancy's physical transformations, Hogeland explores what it means to feel parental, to choose a life bigger than your own, or to lose a precious gift…The Long Answer is a heartfelt, finely wrought journey for fans of Suzanne Finnamore, Erica Jong, and Marian Keyes." – Booklist (starred review)
"The gestures at metafiction feel undercooked...though Hogeland does a nice job showing the degree to which the women's lives are shaped by reproduction. Still, this doesn't quite cohere." - Publishers Weekly
"A brilliant debut, both coolly empathetic and searingly personal, a powerful bridge between fiction's two current modes. Anna Hogeland writes beautifully, with unwavering passion and insight, about the complexities of motherhood and female relationships." – Jess Walter, New York Times-bestselling author of The Cold Millions
"A brilliantly constructed novel about women, and about the power of love in the heart of one woman through whom these female souls are elucidated, their passions, their terrible losses, and their bravery. These characters breathe on the page, and their stories are moving and involving. Anna Hogeland is a wonderfully talented writer." – Richard Bausch, author of Peace
"In concentric circles of stories told and stories secreted away, The Long Answer is about women making life and losing life and about fertility itself--the promise and the more complicated truth. This beautiful novel tugs at friendship, marriage, family and women in moments of heartbreaking and miraculous transformation." – Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
This information about The Long Answer was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anna Hogeland is a psychotherapist in private practice, with an MSW from Smith College School of Social Work and an MFA from UC Irvine. She lives in Vermont.
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