ELEVEN HOURS in The Wall Street Journal

In the Wall Street Journal, Sam Sacks calls Eleven Hours "exhilarating." He adds: "in the heart-in-throat climax, Ms. Erens maintains her poise and precision. The writing is candid without being sensational, detailed without being clinical. This admirable novel reminds us that even when childbirth is overseen by caring professionals in state-of-the-art facilities, it still arrives on waves of blood." (Most of this review is behind a paywall for non-subscribers.)

BOOKLIST praise for ELEVEN HOURS

"Erens’ short novel is beautiful, contained, and remarkable. That a novel about the universal, essential, yet ordinary and often addressed process of bringing about new life could be so fresh is something readers can get lost considering." (May 1 issue)

ELEVEN HOURS receives starred Publishers Weekly review (and is their Pick of the Week)

I can't really ask for better than this: "Written with incredible clarity, this third novel from Erens (The Virgins) is a wonder, shifting between two protagonists with ease to tell a deeply personal narrative of childbirth, complete with tension, horror, and deep, mature emotion. This novel does not sentimentalize the delivery of a child but rather examines the surprise—mental and physical—that accompanies it. Labor stories are as old as time, but Erens's novel feels incredibly fresh and vivid. An outstanding accomplishment." 

ELEVEN HOURS receives starred Kirkus review

Kirkus starred reviews are very precious in this business, and I've never received one before. Now I have, for Eleven Hours. The entire review made me very happy because it suggested that the reviewer read the novel in very much the spirit in which I wrote it (this is far from always the case, even in reviews full of praise). The review is too long to reproduce here in full, but I'll quote from the very end: ". . . by combining portraits of a woman at the beginning of her pregnancy and a woman on the brink of motherhood, Erens shows that there is not one moment between these two experiences without peril. Powerful—aesthetically and viscerally." 

The Lifted Veil

The current issue (#66) of Tin House features a short piece by me on George Eliot's phenomenally strange novella The Lifted Veil, as well as fiction by Dorothy Allison and Helen Phillips, poetry by Sharon Olds and Cornelius Eady, and a provocative essay on gender in writing and publishing entitled "Pandering," by Claire Vaye Watkins. And much more! For now, the piece can be read online here (note: you have to scroll down to the section Lost & Found and select the piece).

Knausgaard's Triumph

I've got a new piece in the Fall 2015 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review on Karl Ove Knausgaard. While it seems as if hundreds of thousands of words have already been written about this author, I felt that certain things had not been said. Even those who love his work often throw around words like "boring" and "narcissistic" to describe it; I argue Nay. I also take on what seems to me the too-easy charge that if a woman had written the same six volumes, they would not have become an international sensation.