A lie someone told you about yourself

Title:

Author:

Davies, Peter Ho, 1966- author.

Summary:

A first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests-- and questions that reverberate down the years. A couple faces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political experiences a family can have: to have a child, and conversely, the decision not to have a child. -- Adapted from jacket.

Physical Description:

228 pages ; 19 cm

Subject Term:

Pregnancy -- Fiction.

Abortion -- Fiction.

Spouses -- Fiction.

Families -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,

Publication Date:

2021

ISBN:

9780544277717

Publication Information:

Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.

Call Number:

DAVIES

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003486019	Adult Fiction	DAVIES Peter Ho	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A People 10 Best Books of the Year * A New York Times Notable Book of the Year * An Independent (UK) 20 Best Books of the Year

"Wise, bracingly honest...A reassuring reality check...Exhilarating." --New York Times Book Review

A heartbreaking, soul-baring novel about the repercussions of choice that "will strike a resonant chord with parents everywhere," (starred Kirkus) from the award-winning author of The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes

A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself traces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political experiences a family can have: to have a child, and conversely, the decision not to have a child. A first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests--and questions that reverberate down the years.

When does sorrow turn to shame?

When does love become labor?

When does chance become choice?

When does a diagnosis become destiny?

And when does fact become fiction?

This spare, graceful narrative chronicles the flux of parenthood, marriage, and the day-to-day practice of loving someone. As challenging as it is vulnerable, as furious as it is tender, as touching as it is darkly comic, Peter Ho Davies's new novel is an unprecedented depiction of fatherhood.

"There are some stories that require as much courage to write as they do art. Peter Ho Davies's achingly honest, searingly comic portrait of fatherhood is just such a story...The world needs more stories like this one, more of this kind of courage, more of this kind of love." --Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend

"There is nothing superfluous in these pages...A novel that...earns its place on the shelf alongside the frank and sometimes acerbic memoirs of Rachel Cusk and Anne Enright." --Claire Messud, Harper's

Author Notes

PETER HO DAVIES is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of The Fortunes and The Welsh Girl (long-listed for the Booker Prize). Chosen by Granta as one of the Best of Young British Novelists, he is on the faculty of the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Michigan. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Davies (The Fortunes) delves into fatherhood in his thoughtful latest, intertwining musings on pregnancy, marriage, family life, and work. The unnamed narrator, a writer and creative writing professor, makes the difficult decision with his wife to terminate their pregnancy after the fetus tests positive for mosaicism and their doctor gives them a long list of potential birth defects. A subsequent successful pregnancy brings new fears over their son's development, as the couple processes their internalized shame over the abortion and their son's potential autism ("Abortion is shameful, because pregnancy is shameful, because sex is shameful, because periods are shameful. It almost makes me relieved we had a boy," the wife says). Davies explores their emotions in unflinching honesty, as the narrator contends with lingering fears over getting their son tested for autism. Davies's smooth prose and ruminations on language (a synonym for "imagine," the narrator considers, is also "to conceive") are the stars of this work. While an anticlimactic, philosophical conclusion somewhat undermines the narrator's character development after he embraces his role as a father, it resonates with the key theme of paradoxes. Davies's meditation on the complexities of parenthood is at once celebration and absolution, finding truth in human contradictions. Agent: Maria Massie, Massie & McQuilkin Literary. (Jan.)

Library Journal Review

In this study of the burdens of choice, a couple's first pregnancy is terminated after devastating test returns. Then a second pregnancy culminates in a difficult birth and more tests with aching consequences, as sorrow turns to shame, diagnosis to destiny, and the act of loving an everyday challenge. From Anisfield-Wolf and Chautauqua Prize winner; with a 40,000-copy first printing.