I do not know what to say about this book to be honest. I found it very boring and just not good. I would not recommend this book. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

I always wait impatiently for new books from Europa Editions and this one did not disappoint, Unusual style - check, unconventional characters - check and even bizarre punctuation did not detract from the plot development. I did not read the book overnight and it certainly not for everyone, but if you look for an experimental writing and want to dip your toes into something new - give it a try,

***Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley and Europa Editions!***

There is only one word that I can come up with for this book. It was bizarre. From what I understand the author is a poet. This makes a lot of sense to me as much of this narrative reads more like prose. And I got the sense that the author was doing a lot of exploring of the bounds of fiction. I appreciate that too but it didn’t work for me.

Parts of this read like a poem, others like diary entries, others like bullet points. And then occasionally the author would throw in what can only be described as rap lyrics. It made it very difficult for me to connect with the story in any way because the story kept changing. I also hated that the author insisted on typing out everyone’s accents. That made this so hard to follow in addition to everything else. Whenever anyone spoke I would not be able to determine what was happening without reading it twice. It was incredibly bizarre and I still don’t know quite what to make of it.

Outside of the writing style, I wasn’t invested in the plot or characters either. The plot was fine (nothing special), but the characters were awful. Felicia alternately comes across as a naive little girl or a crazy person. One second she’s finally realizing that she was deceived and taken advantage of and the next second she’s trying to stab people. And Edgar was just horrible. Selfish, persistent liar, abusive son, abusive lover, borderline rapist, takes advantage of young and naive women. He was a real gem. I haven’t hated a character as much as him in quite a long time.

Some people will undoubtedly love this book and the way it explores how we write fiction. But, it didn’t work for me.

Experimental fiction at its best. All the emotions displayed warm funny so unique I could not stop reading.A book I thought about even when I needed to put it down.A book I will be recommending for a unique original read.#netgalley#europabooks.

3.5 stars. I've read so many great books lately that I think I would've rated this higher if I wasn't swamped.
A strange love story that was conflicted and weird. I really can't describe how I felt about this book because I kinda skimmed it but I did Like the story in between. I gave it a fair rating but I didn't do this book justice at the pace I read it.

The characters meet in hospital where both mothers are ill. One mother passes, here and then she goes to work for his mother and they fall in love. They part and the title says it all. They part and she's with child and from there I found myself skimming. My fault not the book. I still would recommend! 3 stars!


Special thanks to NetGalley and Europa Publishing for the ARC of this book.

I received this book complimentary from NetGalley but all opinions are my own.

God. This was painful for me to read. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters and the writing was awkward. I just didn’t love any of the characters and I hate the pregnancy trope where a character who dislikes another gets pregnant. I just don’t love it. I couldn’t get into this at all.

Ian Williams is an award winning poet, so it is no shock that his first novel, Reproduction, is ambitious, experimental, but still at it’s core a huge family saga and a love story. I loved most of it, and I was totally sucked in and engaged in the story and the structure until the very last part, part four where it just does not click like the first eighty percent of the novel. The novel does revolve around reproduction, and the structure is great and reflects this. This is explained in an interview with the author the January 2019 edition of “Quill and Quire.” Read the whole interview here.




How did you conceive of the book’s structure?

I wanted to write a book that would reproduce itself, so it’s in four parts and each part approaches reproduction differently. In part one it’s biological. It’s in 23 paired chapters so it’s chromosomal. Part two has four characters, so we go from those two characters to four characters and 16 chapters. And part three [grows] exponentially, from 16 to 256 small sections.

At the end of part three the book gets cancer and you see those tumours growing in the superscript and the subscript [rendered by the text flowing intermittently above, below, and along the sentence lines]. That is the final form of reproduction beyond human control. It’s complex but it should read like a good love story. That’s the only thing I want to read and write, or care about in people’s lives. One of the first questions I ask [socially] is “How did you meet so-and-so?”




I deeply loved most of this novel. The first three sections, really hit, and I spent hours at a time reading. The fourth part just seems to run out of momentum. There is so much dynamic between all of the characters, between Felicia and Edgar, between Felicia and Oliver, between Oliver and Army, between Oliver and his ex, between Army and Heather, all of the characters have tension between them, and it feels real. This is not always executed very well, but in this case the tension is almost palpable. This is such a testament to the strength of the writing. Williams does not spare the time it takes to really develop all of the main characters, and he really does a great job with the structure and the experimentation. It does not feel as gimmicky as some books that try to do the same thing. Maybe because the story feels so genuine and the characters as strong and developed, it seems like the structure feels genuine too. 




I do love this novel, and now that I am thinking about the last section being that way because the cells are filled with cancer, I do not dislike it as much as I did while reading it. I will be looking forward to anything else that Williams writes and will likely reread this novel at some point. 

4.5 out of 5 stars.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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.

I tried to read this book 2 times. I just simply could not get into it. There was just nothing interesting about it to keep me going. Thank you for my advance copy

This one, I think, would have gotten five stars from me just because of its sheer ambitiousness. I'm not a fan of experimental fiction, and frankly would probably not have requested this from NetGalley if I knew that's what this was. But, surprisingly, it worked for me on just about every level: superb character development, an intriguing premise, mind-blowingly courageous, and filled with humor, insight and multiple levels of emotional resonance. It also didn't hurt that there were subtle treatments of every social issue I am most attentive to: race, class, gender, immigration ... and of course, love. The complicated imperfection of the characters, and the realistic portrayal of their personal and interpersonal journeys over a span of about two decades kept me fully engaged, even through those parts where the author's stylistic flourishes had me scratching my head.

Some people will absolutely hate this book, especially if their preference is straightforward, just-the-facts-ma'am narrative. This book doesn't give you that. Like, at all. It jumps between and over time, uses only the most necessary and sparing punctuation, and doesn't shy away from dialect. It is a challenging book in that way, but still, an amazing accomplishment that reminds me just how limitless the bounds of storytelling can be if you're a writer who is as unafraid as Ian Williams clearly is.