Reproduction

By Ian Williams

WINNER OF THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE

A hilarious, surprising and poignant love story about the way families are invented, told with the savvy of a Zadie Smith and with an inventiveness all Ian Williams' own, Reproduction explores unconventional connections and brilliantly redefines family.

Felicia and Edgar meet as their mothers are dying. Felicia, a teen from an island nation, and Edgar, the lazy heir of a wealthy German family, come together only because their mothers share a hospital room. When Felicia's mother dies and Edgar's "Mutter" does not, Felicia drops out of high school and takes a job as Mutter's caregiver. While Felicia and Edgar don't quite understand each other, and Felicia recognizes that Edgar is selfish, arrogant, and often unkind, they form a bond built on grief (and proximity) that results in the birth of a son Felicia calls Armistice. Or Army, for short.
     Some years later, Felicia and Army (now 14) are living in the basement of a home owned by Oliver, a divorced man of Portuguese descent who has two kids--the teenaged Heather and the odd little Hendrix. Along with Felicia and Army, they form an unconventional family, except that Army wants to sleep with Heather, and Oliver wants to kill Army. Then Army's fascination with his absent father--and his absent father's money--begins to grow as odd gifts from Edgar begin to show up. And Felicia feels Edgar's unwelcome shadow looming over them. A brutal assault, a mortal disease, a death, and a birth reshuffle this group of people again to form another version of the family.
     Reproduction is a profoundly insightful exploration of the bizarre ways people become bonded that insists that family isn't a matter of blood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9780735274075

Ian Williams

Ian Williams was foreign correspondent for Channel 4 News, based in Russia (1992–1995) and then Asia (1995–2006). He then joined NBC News as Asia Correspondent (2006–2015), when he was based in Bangkok and Beijing. As well as reporting from China over the last 25 years, he has also covered conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Ukraine. He won an Emmy and BAFTA awards for his discovery and reporting on the Serb detention camps during the war in Bosnia. He is currently a doctoral student in the War Studies department at King’s College, London, focusing on cyber issues.

Reviews for Reproduction

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Structured in a 'clever' way, to be clever, not to add to the value of the story. Did not finish.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't know when I have been so disappointed in a book. This book won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2019, chosen from a short list that included Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Coles and The Innocents by Michael Crummey. I gave SGHatLCGC five stars and The Innocents 4.5 stars but I feel I am being generous in giving this book 2.5 stars. The jury which included some Canadian writers that I have admired very much blew it in my opinion.Felicia and Edgar meet in a hospital room that their mothers are sharing. Felicia is a teenager and Edgar is middle-aged. Felicia is from the Caribbean and poor; Edgar is German and from a very wealthy family. It would seem that they have little in common but after her mother dies Felicia agrees to move into Edgar's house to care for his mother (Mutter). Edgar has sex with Felicia telling her that he has had a vasectomy but it turns out that not only is he a sexual predator but he is a liar. Felicia gets pregnant and Edgar asks her to leave the house. Fast forward a number of years and Felicia and her son, Armisitice (Army) are renting half of a house from a Portuguese man, Oliver, separated from his wife. His two children, Heather and Hendrix, come to visit for the summer. Army is a little younger than Heather but that doesn't stop him from wanting to sleep with her. Does he? It's unclear but when Heather is found to be pregnant after she returns to live with her mother everyone assumes Army is the father. Heather comes to Toronto to have the baby and leaves the baby behind with Army, his mother and her father as a new family. Meanwhile Edgar has resurfaced because he has been accused of sexual improprieties at his work. He wants Felicia to refrain from telling anyone about their relationship but he also wants to get involved with Army. Or perhaps he just thinks that if Felicia thinks Army will benefit from Edgar's involvement she will not spill the beans. At over 400 pages this book was way too long. As well, the author threw in all kinds of different writing structures the point of which, as far as I could see, was to prove how clever her was. I couldn't care about any of the characters although Army was at least interesting. Very, very disappointing.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This novel is uniquely structured. The first part alternates perspectives between Felicia Shaw and Edgar Gross. Their mothers are sharing a hospital room. Felicia is a nineteen year old recent immigrant; she is poor and is completing high school as her Caribbean diploma was not recognized in Canada. Edgar is a successful business man, originally from Germany, at about 20 years older than her. They bond over the health of their mothers (one dies; one doesn't) and form a relationship that lasts, in different ways, for the rest of their lives. I really enjoyed this part.In part two, Felicia is a single mother (yep, Edgar's the dad) of Army -- a fourteen year old boy. They rent part of a house from Oliver, who has custody of his 16 year old daughter and 10 year old son for the summer. I found my interest waning a bit, Army doesn't seem like the kind of person Felicia would raise and I was distracted by bringing in new characters to the detriment of hearing more about Edgar. Part 3 takes us forward another few years, and Heather is having a son of her own. By Part 4, Edgar is back as Army wants a relationship with his father even if Felicia doesn't.The novel does a good job of portraying life and relationships in all their complexity. Felicia doesn't have a chosen family so much as she has one thrust upon her. I found it too long, a bit unreal in how some characters interact and there is a stream of consciousness in the final part that just confused me.I'd say the book was okay, with flashes of brilliant writing and insight.

[alanteder · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Experimentally Structured Family SagaReview of the Vintage Canada paperback edition (Sept. 2019) of the original hardcover (Jan. 2019)Reproduction has a genetically/mathematically inspired structure of 4 Parts (which each jumps a generation or so) consisting of 1) 23 pairs of stories, 2) 16 short stories, 3) 256 (i.e. 16 times 16) paragraphs, and 4) an extended disintegration. These are separated by interludes called The Sex Talk which can be read as sequences of short poems and fragments. The 4th Part is likely the most disorienting section as it consists of a through plot line where one character's name begins to gradually deteriorate (from what I at first thought was a transposition typo) into randomly re-ordered letters and at last into a final long wheeze of a single extended vowel. Part 4's through plot is subverted by seemingly randomly inserted fragments of a lowercase subscript plot which covers topics such as high school science lab & Gregor Mendel's genetics discoveries. Although the subscript plot seems independent, it does occasionally chance to comment on the main plot.I mention all of this structural play right off the top as a possible guide for readers who might be uncertain or hesitant about the experimental prose aspects. None of this was a barrier to understanding this extended family saga which still made you feel for and understand these characters along the way. From matriarch Felicia, absentee patriarch Edgar, striving entrepreneur Armistice (Army), stand-in patriarch Oliver, sister & brother Heather and Hendrix, and budding filmmaker / artist Chariot (Riot) each character has their hate or love, cheer or cringe moments.

[icolford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Novels, like love and family, take many forms. On every page of Reproduction, his debut novel, Ian Williams finds ways to resist and defy conventional narrative practice while constructing an audacious and uniquely challenging story that crosses generational lines. In the process, he has written a poignant, resonant tale about intersecting lives and the ways that seemingly trivial decisions can have unexpected and far-reaching consequences. In the 1970s, Felicia and Edgar meet in a hospital room where both of their mothers are encamped, suffering from life-threatening illnesses. At this point in the story, Felicia, who is from a tiny “unrecognized” Caribbean island, is in her late teens and Edgar, who is from Germany, is about twenty years her elder. He is well off, the CEO of his family’s firm. Felicia has never known financial security. Despite significant differences in age and culture, and despite Felicia’s flinty independent streak and determination to be self-sufficient, the two connect on an emotional level, and Felicia ends up pregnant. The story skips forward to the 1990s, with Felicia, now a responsible young woman who has made something of her life, renting a portion of a house in Brampton. She lives there with her son Armistice, shortened to Army, a fast-talking, enterprising fourteen-year-old who always has some scheme on the go, and who wants to learn more about his biological father, but his mother isn’t talking. Their landlord, Oliver, is acrimoniously divorced and his children, sultry sixteen-year-old Heather and her younger brother Hendrix, are visiting. The story skips forward again into the near-present day. Army and Heather are in their 30s, Heather’s son Chariot—shortened to Riot—wants to be a filmmaker but can’t keep out of trouble. An ailing Edgar re-enters the picture. Williams’ novel is complex the way life is complex, and for that reason defies easy summary. The lives of his characters—their desires, successes, failures, cruelties, good fortune, poor decisions—are described in comprehensive, vivid, sometimes alarming detail. Their bumps and bruises are real. Their world is unique to them, but is absolutely convincing because it is our world too, the one we see every time we step outside. The novel’s length is an issue because the action drags somewhat toward the end, where the book occasionally seems to be telling us things that we’ve already heard. It’s also possible that some readers will find the author’s quirky narrative embellishments off-putting rather than amusing. Still, readers who persevere to the end will be hard pressed to find another novel that portrays life as we know it with such flair, ingenuity, authenticity and genuine affection.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Felicity and Edgar meet when their mothers are assigned to the same room, in a Toronto hospital that is dealing with being flooded. One mother lives, the other does not. Felicity and Edgar develop a relationship based on a combination of need, compassion, and a willingness to take advantage. This is not a love story. Years later, Felicity and her son are renting the downstairs portion of a split level home in a diverse neighborhood. Army is determined to make his fortune. His landlord and upstairs neighbor would like him to stop conducting his business in the shared garage. The landlord's son is interested in ant life. The landlord's teenage daughter is bored, but she has her eye on a cute guy working at the mall. This novel is about families, and how they sometimes form because of nothing more than proximity and need. It's about being an immigrant and a hyphenated Canadian. It's about choices and living with those choices. Ian Williams won the Giller Prize for this novel. It's a lively and modern take on the usual immigrant tale. It also sagged in the final third as Williams played with format and style. Some of his risks paid off (like how a character's name was misspelled in different ways near the end) but others proved more distracting than effective. In the end, I appreciated this novel more than I enjoyed it.