Reproduction
Family stories, General fiction
Human-narrated audio, Human-transcribed braille
Summary
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 AMAZON CANADA FIRST NOVEL AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 TORONTO BOOK AWARDS“Poet Ian Williams experiments with structure to tell a classic love story. . . . Reproduction is reminiscent of Miriam… Toews’s novel All My Puny Sorrows in its balance between grief and humour. It’s an intergenerational story told in an unexpected way.” —Quill & Quire“Ian Williams delivers a promising first novel. Reproduction manages to be witty, playful, and disarmingly offbeat—even as it hums with serious themes. . . . Reproduction serves as a literary representation of the various intersections of culture, race, and gender in contemporary Canada, it is a mirror with graffiti/social commentary both humourous and powerful scrawled all over it.” —Rayyan Al-Shawaf, Toronto Star “[D]riven as much by its relationships as its characters, and is intensified and enriched by an inventive style that borrows from Williams’s giant poet’s brain.” —The Globe and Mail“[A]n intergenerational novel . . . that examines how love can supersede blood ties. [Reproduction’s] complicated path mirrors how many families are built on experiences that don’t make the photo albums, and illuminates how dark and painful moments can share equal space with joy and laughter. . . .With Reproduction, Williams joins authors like David Chariandy and Catherine Hernandez—whose recent novels are set in Scarborough—showcasing the bounty of stories of those who live beyond the CN Tower’s shadow.” —Sue Carter, Toronto Star“The startling brilliance of Ian Williams stems from his restlessness with form. His ceaseless creativity susses out the right patterning of story, the right vernacular nuance, the right diagram and deftly dropped reference—all in service of vividly illuminating the intermingled comedy and trauma of family.” —David Chariandy, author of Brother and I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You“Reproduction’s genius is its weaponized empathy, the precision-etched intensity of Williams’s gritty, witty, wholly unsentimental exploration of the collision of human hearts and the messy aftermath. Love and its lack form a spectrum that the characters bounce between, searching for connections, redemption and meaning.” —Eden Robinson, author of Trickster Drift and Son of a Trickster