Bøger af Louisa Hall

A lucid, genre-defying novel that explores the surreality of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in a country in crisis A novelist attempts to write a book about Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, a mother and artist whose harrowing pregnancies reveal the cost of human reproduction. Soon, however, the novelist's own painful experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as her increasing awareness of larger threats from climate change to pandemic, force her to give up on the book and turn instead to writing a contemporary Frankenstein, based on the story of an old friend who mysteriously reappears in her life.In telling a story that ranges from pregnancy to miscarriage to traumatic birth, from motherhood to the frontiers of reproductive science, Louisa Hall draws powerfully from her own experiences, as well as the stories of two other women: Mary Shelley and Anna, a scientist and would-be parent who is contemplating the possibilities, and morality, of genetic modification.Both devastating and joyful, elegant and exacting, Reproduction is a powerful reminder of the hazards and the rewards involved in creating new life, and a profoundly feminist exploration of motherhood, female friendship, and artistic ambition.

A lucid, genre-defying novel that explores the surreality of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in a country in crisis A novelist attempts to write a book about Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, a mother and artist whose harrowing pregnancies reveal the cost of human reproduction. Soon, however, the novelist's own painful experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as her increasing awareness of larger threats from climate change to pandemic, force her to give up on the book and turn instead to writing a contemporary Frankenstein, based on the story of an old friend who mysteriously reappears in her life.In telling a story that ranges from pregnancy to miscarriage to traumatic birth, from motherhood to the frontiers of reproductive science, Louisa Hall draws powerfully from her own experiences, as well as the stories of two other women: Mary Shelley and Anna, a scientist and would-be parent who is contemplating the possibilities, and morality, of genetic modification.Both devastating and joyful, elegant and exacting, Reproduction is a powerful reminder of the hazards and the rewards involved in creating new life, and a profoundly feminist exploration of motherhood, female friendship, and artistic ambition.

A “splendid” (The Boston Globe) debut novel about the complex bonds of three sisters and their Philadelphia family's legacy, by the author of Reproduction.For more than thirty years, William Adair’s faith in life was based on two indisputable principles: the exceptional good looks and athletic talents of his three daughters and the historical status of his family in their Philadelphia suburb. After suffering a stroke, William wakes up in his hospital bed to realize that his world has collapsed: his children are less extraordinary than he had remembered and his family’s notable history has been forgotten.Having lost their father’s pride, the three sisters struggle to define themselves. Their mother, whose memory has started to fade, is unable to help them recall the talented girls they used to be.For three generations, a carriage house has stood on the Adair property. Built by William’s grandfather, it was William’s childhood refuge and a sign of the family’s prominence. Now held captive by a neighbor due to a zoning error, the house has decayed beyond recognition. Rallying to save their father, Diana, Elizabeth, and Isabelle take on the battle for the carriage house that once stood as a symbol of his place in the world. Overcoming misunderstandings and betrayals both deep in the past and painfully new, each of the Adairs ultimately finds a place of forgiveness. The Carriage House is a moving, beautifully wrought debut.

A woman attempts to write a novel about Mary Shelley. and is interrupted by several pregnancies, eventually coming to fixate on a friend who is also attempting to conceive a child.

?Everything you could want in a story is here: courage and cowardice, lust and devotion, sickness and health, partings and death, better and worse. Speak is a novel that calls to the reader in many voices, harnessed to one distinct and singular imagination?Louisa Hall's. Turn to page one and be amazed.??Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The FiremanIn a narrative that spans geography and time, told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human, and what it means to be less than fully alive. A Puritan woman freshly arrived in the New World, mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing, a computer science professor, a young girl, and a former Silicon Valley wunderkind now in prison are all attempting to communicate . . . with estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. Although each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, they all share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard, or understood.In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human?shrinking rapidly with today's technological advances?echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people.?Speak is that rarest of finds: a novel that doesn't remind me of any other book I've ever read. A complex, nuanced, and beautifully written meditation on language, immortality, the nature of memory, the ethical problems of artificial intelligence, and what it means to be human.??Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

In the vein of Coetzee's Summertime or W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants, Trinity revisits the life of scientist Robert Oppenheimer as narrated by seven fictional characters who claim to have known him.

She cannot run. She cannot walk. She cannot even blink. As her batteries run down for the final time, all she can do is speak. Will you listen?From a pilgrim girl's diary, to a traumatised child talking to a software program; from Alan Turing's conviction in the 1950s, to a genius imprisoned in 2040 for creating illegally lifelike dolls: all these lives have shaped and changed a single artificial intelligence - MARY3. In Speak she tells you their story, and her own. It is the last story she will ever tell, spoken both in celebration and in warning.When machines learn to speak, who decides what it means to be human? 'TRANSFIXING'New York Times'BRILLIANT'Huffington Post'INCREDIBLE'Buzzfeed'HYPNOTIC'Guardian'A MASTERPIECE'NPR

Jane Austen's Persuasion is brought into the twenty-first century by Louisa Hall in The Carriage House, a stunning novel of family and forgiveness, set in contemporary suburban America.Elizabeth, Diana and Izzy, three sisters who have lived a privileged life in suburban America are the pride and joy of their father William. All three were tennis prodigies as children, popular, and successful at school: they seemed destined for greatness.But the idyllic fa ade masks a family who is in turmoil - their mother is suffering with early onset Alzheimer's which is making Izzy spiral out of control, Diana is failing her career, Elizabeth feels trapped by her domesticity and their father is still in love with his old sweetheart, Adelia.When William is suddenly taken ill, he reveals that he has lost faith in the things he had once held closest to his heart: the promise of his gifted daughters and his grandfather's beautiful carriage house, now lost to the family. Devastated by his disappointment in them and desperate to make their father proud, the sisters band together to restore his beloved carriage house which is now dilapidated, unloved and under threat of demolition by the neighbourhood association, and to re-build a family in disarray.Touching, intelligent and compassionate, The Carriage House is a drama about family, relationships and forgiveness - and, most importantly, that it is never too late to make amends.'Louisa Hall writes about the wars waged between neighbours and family members with extraordinary sympathy and a keen sense of humour. Part Jane Austen, part John Cheever, this tale of upheaval in a suburban Philadelphia household marks the debut of a stunning new writer' Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust 'Every sentence in The Carriage House is full of clarity, attention, and grace. Louisa Hall is a writer to be admired' Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds 'The Carriage House is gorgeously detailed and rife with betrayal, heartbreak, nostalgia, lost love, and possibilities for redemption. You will ache for the Adair family, cringe at their mistakes, and plead with them to make peace with each other before it's too late. In her smart and insightful debut, Louisa Hall examines the ways in which we fail and forgive others-and ourselves' Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser ParadiseLouisa Hall was born in Philadelphia in 1982 and grew up in the nearby suburb of Haverford. She graduated from Harvard in 2004 and went on to play squash professionally for three years. She is now completing her Ph.D. in literature at the University of Texas at Austin, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Her poems have been published in journals such as The New Republic, The Southwest Review, and Ellipsis. The Carriage House is her first novel.