Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens

 

Summary (from the publisher): 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 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 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.

Review: Lore is in labor and has arrived at the hospital alone and with a very specific and detailed birth plan. Her nurse Franckline is from Haiti and is secretly pregnant herself. The two women navigate the difficult labor and delivery together in a surprising partnership, while ruminating on their own lives. While the reader only learns more about the two women from their own perspectives and not from anything they share with one another, they still manage to form a close working connection through the eleven hours they spend together.  

This was an evocative description of the raw pain, fear, and physicality that is giving birth to a child. This was the most realistic and true depiction of childbirth that I have come across in literature. I loved that the whole novel is the story of the childbirth, because every birth is its own saga and standalone tale. 

This novel has no chapter breaks and flows from present to past and back and forth between Lore and Franckline's perspectives. I think it worked really well though, as this shared experience really shapes both characters in this shared experience of pain, birth, and impending motherhood. In addition to such a vivid portrait of childbirth, Erens also does an excellent job of fleshing out the characters of both Lore and Franckline. Even though this is a very brief novel, I had a very clear sense of who both women were. For instance, Lore is prickly, private, and stubborn. Franckline thinks, "Why is there so much No in this girl? Why does she seem to take a grim pleasure in having nothing, no one, in refusing distraction or comfort?" (33). 

Beautiful novel and character study about one of the most moving and sometimes traumatic moments in a woman's life as they risk death to bring a new life into the world. This book should probably come with a trigger warning for anyone who has ever experienced pregnancy loss or traumatic childbirth but otherwise an excellent read.

Stars: 4