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powerful story about labour, and why Lore is delivering her baby alone, and the worries the midwife has both for the woman she is looking after, and herself.
It was the most perfect and excruciating description of pain I've ever read,

Highly recommended, but perhaps, if you're pregnant, only read it after you've delivered, I fell in love with Erens' writing in The Virgins, and while this book is a completely different animal, what it shares with her previous novel is that once again, Erens has set herself a seemingly impossible task.
In The Virgins, Erens chose for her narrator a character that existed only on the obsessive periphery of the protagonists, and must admit then that much of the story is only his own invention.
In Eleven Hours, Erens limits herself to only the stretch of time that spans a hospital labor.
There is an intense intimacy that blossoms between the two women, the laboring woman, and the secretly pregnant LampD nurse attending her.
As readers, we're given glimpses into the secrets both women carry while the women themselves exchange little more than what's necessary to accomplish the work in front of themthe delivery of Lore's baby.
Still there's a deep authenticity to the bond that grows between them, But of course we know that this is not the beginning of a friendship, This relationship, powerful as it is, begins and ends in single stretch of time, One of the real strengths of the novel is the incredible risk it takes with resolution, or more accurately, the lack thereof.
Like the women themselves, our intimacy with these characters is fleeting, For me, this makes the novel even more powerful in it's mimicry of the bonds we can build but not retain with the significant strangers who pass through our lives.
What a wonderful, visceral book, up soon. Even though this was a very short book, it felt REALLLY REALLLLY LONG! I didn't find this gripping in the least.
It did feel realistic which I appreciated to a certain extent, But then came the ending, Even though the author was probably going for tense in the ending, it was a little too late.
I was to the point where I just didn't care, I liked the nurse though, I wish all labor/delivery nurses were as nice and considerate as she was, A short novel framed around one womans labour, Lore arrives at the hospital alone and selfcontained after a painful split with her partner, but over the course of her labour comes to rely on and trust her delivery nurse, Franckline.
I thought the extended depiction of labour was very powerful almost too much so, I was reading it on the subway and felt so queasy at one point that I thought I was coming down with something.
But its very detailed and welldone, It made me realize how little birth and labour feature in most literature, The residual plot about Lores breakup and the nurses background felt more just sketched in, Now if you're pregnant especially w yourst, don't read this, And as someone who's already had two, it was still a very emotional read, Lore arrives at the hospital, all alone, feeling like she's going to give birth at any second but she's justcm along.
Her nurse Franckline is herself pregnant, something she wasn't expecting and something she worries about, Such lyrical writing as we follow thesewomen through labor, through their past I feel safe in saying that every woman who has been responsible for growing a fetus for approximately nine months and then delivering that precious new person into the world will find this short novel, Eleven Hours precious.
Most women who have been pregnant remember that time as one that is unique, life changing, and both joyous and full of fear, and sometimes desperation.
A young woman named Lore enters a NYC hospital alone and meets her delivery nurse Franckline, who is pregnant, early days, and with her own history that is as mysterious as what we learn about Lore.
The two women bond with an understanding and acts of empathy and compassion that often only women can understand.
The novel is slim eleven hours perhaps a nursing shift or the hours it takes to reach delivery and though the novel and the time is short, the whole world changes at the end of that journey.
Erin's story is a joy to read,

Copy received courtesy of NetGalley and Tin House Books, Lore arrives at the hospital aloneno husband, no partner, no friends, Her birth plan is explicit: she wants no fetal monitor, no IV, no epidural, Franckline, a nurse in the maternity wardherself on the verge of showingis patient with the young woman.
She knows what its 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 soontobe mothers who, in the midst of a difficult labor, are forced to reckon with their pasts and recreate their futures.
Lore must disentangle herself from a love triangle Franckline must move beyond past traumas to accept the life thats waiting for her.
Pamela Erens moves seamlessly between their begrudging partnership and the memories evoked by so intense an experience: for Lore, of the father of her child and her former best friend for Franckline, of the family in Haiti from which shes exiled.
At turns urgent and lyrical, Erenss novel is a visceral portrait of childbirth, and a vivid rendering of the way we approach motherhoodwith fear and joy, anguish and awe.
It was fantastic, and I'm truly grateful I'm not pregnant as I read this, I delivered my boy.years ago, and still winced with remembered pain with every contraction Lore faced, It's a partial character study which mentions the possibility of having not enough time to know anyone's story within the time allotted after the start of labor pains until the delivery.
But we still get enough of an insight into the two women Lore, the single momtobe in labor, and Franckline, her nurse, also pregnant but who hasn't told anyone because she's afraid she'll lose it the way she has before.


But the book is primarily about the whole process itself, the good, the bad and the horrible painful when will this end feeling of it.
And if that's not your thing, this book isn't for you, If you're pregnant, avoid. Really. Read it after the safe delivery of your baby, The currently pregnant should not read this book, Everybody else should at least consider it, Its a powerful portrayal of childbirth, about what happens when expectations dont meet reality and what its like to face giving birth on ones own.
With the exception of flashbacks that explain the lives of the two main characters one woman in labor and another working as her nurse the entire novel takes place in the hospital.
Its the best, mostdetailed depiction of labor Ive ever read, I wish we had more books like these,

Rebecca Hussey


from The Best Books We Read In June: sitelink comriotr Birth is the worlds most universal experience, Weve either given birth or weve been bornyet strangely, there are no novels that I know of that focus on the labor experience.


Pamela Erens takes on that experience in Eleven Hours, Ive read this author before loved her debut novel, The Understory, and her second book, The Virgins.
I know I can count on Ms, Erens to create poignant and unflinchingly vivid scenes,

She does succeed in her depiction of Lore Tannenbaum, ayearold single mother who arrives at the hospital alone, save for a detailed birth plan that she wants followed.
Her nurse, Franckline, has gone through a series of miscarriages and is now pregnant anew, and anxious that she will again lose her fetus.


When the spotlight shines on these two women, the book shines, There is an unrelenting rhythm to the book, the anxietyproducing long wait, the brutality of childbirth, the sense of wonder of a childs emergence.
The lastpages are “grab ahold of your seat” tensionfilled,

And yet. There is also a backstory here that intermittently takes up about half of the book in totality.
The story is of Lores onetime fiancé, Asa, and the woman they both love, Julia, an artist.
The love triangle seemed derivative to me in any event, it was hard for me to connect to Lores life story.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that in a merepages, there wasnt enough dimensionality for me to intuit or feel her emotions and totally understand her choices.
Franckline, too, seemed more like a representative character, culled from stories of Caribbean nurses, The only thing that felt real to me was her wavering and fear for her own childand for Lores.


So my reading experience was mixed, I very much wanted to like it more,


Beautifully written book, I randomly found it on the New Books shelf at

my local library, Strange that I even wanted to read it, since I don't have much desire to be pregnant or have children.
But this book totally pulled me in and even made me cry a little! I felt like I was really there, going through everything with the characters.
I am a home birth midwife, I liked this book a lot, . . for a time. it presented a very realistic view of hospital birth, and the back stories of these two women were very interesting and drew me in, the end became alarmist and presented a very rare emergency, which made me mad because it feels like it just plays into the scare tactics done to women to keep them in line.


a good and quick read though, This is a very smart book in many ways, The frame of elevenhours, the two interesting young women in different stages of relationships and possible motherhood, and the way the past is weaved together with the present.
Pamela Erens shows not only the women, but also where they come from, and gradually, their inner worlds open up along with the body that gives birth.
The ending is admirableit leaves this fictional world exactly at the right point to keep the readers still involved.
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