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THE LONG ANSWER by Anna Hogeland
the long answer
THE LONG ANSWER
Hogeland, Anna Riverhead (304 pp.) $26.00 | June 21, 2022 978-0-593-41813-0
Anna Hogeland, a 30-year-old pregnant writer who shares the author’s name, chronicles the often unspoken fears and desires of the mothers and would-be mothers in her life. When Anna’s sister, Margot, with whom she’s always had a fraught relationship, calls to tell her she’s had a miscarriage before Anna even knew she was pregnant, it sets off a series of conversations among sisters, close friends, and even strangers in Irvine, California; Anchorage, Alaska; and various points in between about the “closed grief” of pregnancy loss. Then, when things seem to take a turn for the worse in Anna’s own pregnancy, her newfound empathy is put to the test: Will she emerge strengthened by this experience or as a diminished version of her former self? An introspective, psychologically astute, and engaging debut, this novel delves into territory that is rarely explored in fiction: the raw and devastating costs and painful choices that women face when a new life ends before it can begin. For fans of Rachel Cusk’s Outline or Claire Vaye Watkins’ I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness, here is a heart-rending tale that blurs the line between fiction and reality. In tight, unassuming prose, Hogeland unravels a complex web of stories about other women’s lives, the stories they tell her about their own pregnancies and families, as Anna (the narrator) attempts to pinpoint which parts are true and which are false. At a critical moment we realize that the story she’s telling and retelling about these other women is, in fact, the one she has been trying to avoid, the one that wasn’t ever supposed to end up in these pages: her own story. “This was never supposed to be part of this novel,” she writes.
