The Long Answer

(Paperback, Main)

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'The Long Answer is a triumph of human portraiture, as subtle as it is seething' - Sunday Times

'There were other women, how many other women, who had felt and wanted what I'd felt and wanted and felt and wanted differently too. Anywhere I've been and will go next, there they will be.' Twelve weeks pregnant for the first time, Anna speaks to her sister on the other side of the country and learns she has just miscarried her second child. As this loss strains their bond, and complications with Anna's own pregnancy emerge, her tenuous steps towards motherhood are shadowed and illuminated by the women she meets along the way, whose stories of the babies they have had, or longed for, or lost, crowd in.

The Long Answer is a stunning novel of secrets kept and secrets shared. Deeply empathetic and hugely absorbing, it unravels the intimate dynamics of female friendship, sisterhood, motherhood and grief, and the ways in which women are bound together and pulled apart by their shared and contrasting experiences of pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage and infertility.

Reviews

'A breathtaking roundup of the many ways that women carry and lose babies and pregnancies, so many possible and impossible choices to be made, so many capitulations and coercions to be endured. All the narratives in the novel make clear that the only thing that makes any of it bearable is the agency each woman can claim...These stories are crucial.' - The New York Times Book Review

'A brilliant debut, both coolly empathetic and searingly personal, a powerful bridge between fiction's two current modes. Anna Hogeland writes beautifully, with unwavering passion and insight, about the complexities of motherhood and female relationships.' - Jess Walter, New York Times-bestselling author of The Cold Millions

'The Long Answer is truly brilliant. Anna Hogeland writes generously and astutely about motherhood, grief, fertility, and the relationship dynamics between mothers and daughters, sisters and friends, articulating with aching clarity the irresolution of loss, and the quiet power of love. I'm so happy that this beautiful book exists.' - Miranda Ward, author of Adrift

'An introspective, psychologically astute, and engaging debut... a heart-rending tale that blurs the line between fiction and reality...A startling meditation on grief and family and betrayal and the stories we tell about ourselves.' - Kirkus starred review

'I loved this debut novel by Anna Hogeland about motherhood - so coolly and intricately constructed, so quietly intimate, and devastating at its heart.' - Lucy Caldwell

Author Bio

Anna Hogeland is a psychotherapist in private practice, with an MSW from Smith College School of Social Work and an MFA from UC Irvine. She lives in Vermont.