The Long Answer: A Novel

A young woman gathers intimate stories about pregnancy, motherhood, and the nature of female relationships, in this profound and provocative novel.

How do women directly impact one another with the personal secrets they share? Anna, a writer who is pregnant with her first child, explores this question when she finds that she is a magnet for the private, tender stories of the women around her--strangers and family alike.

In some cases, these stories take the place of more difficult conversations. When Anna's sister, Margot, calls to say she's lost a pregnancy no one knew she was carrying, Margot winds up telling a riveting story about a friend and what she has been going through. And when Anna's own pursuit of motherhood upends her life, the stories become a guiding light to help her tell her own. "I needed stories like this now. I needed them like I needed water and salt, to tell me what was possible in the course of a life after the life you'd planned dies inside you."

Incisively written and deeply empathetic, The Long Answer lays open emotional dynamics around female friendship, sisterhood, and grief, fueled by women's shared experiences of pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and infertility. These stories, so intensely intimate, feel like they may be shared just this once and never again, and are relayed by the narrator in reserved, transluscent prose.