Reproduction

Told with the savvy of Zadie Smith, Reproduction is a tale of love among inherited and invented families.

Ian Williams’ rambunctious novel sweeps through a world of racial and religious mash-ups, cultural collisions, and cross-pollinations galore. Consider only three of them: Felicia, Army, and Riot. Felicia Shaw never planned on getting pregnant. But here she is, a young woman from a little-known Caribbean island who can’t be pregnant with Edgar Gross’s baby. Because he’s a married man. Because he’s a married German man who is more than twice her age and who doesn’t want any children. Also because he had a vasectomy. Then there is Army, her son. Turns out that Army has big plans for his life and a huge capacity for denial. He wants to earn 100K with his garage barbershop by the time he’s sixteen, and by twenty-one he plans to have a cool million. That is, if he can manage the upstairs landlord, Oliver, a needy, volatile, recently divorced man whose teenage daughter is now pregnant. Baby? What baby? And Riot — Oliver’s grandson, child of a child — all he wants to do is make art films. Who cares if he’s about to be kicked out of school for making porn?

Beginning in a palliative care ward and ending in a cancer ward, Reproduction is the twenty-first-century proof of John Lennon’s famous claim that “life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” It is the story of strangers from strange places who accidently become forever tangled.