With Reproduction, Ian Williams has given us a book that is one-of-a-kind, a miraculously moving read, and an effortless recommendation ... an unconventional breath of fresh air. He shapes his sentences like silly putty ... and it’s this wildly creative language he uses, in Reproduction, to tell a beautiful, hilarious, and occasionally heart-breaking story about the way family shape our lives, for better or for worse ... Williams beautifully portrays an unconventional family dealing with many of the dramas of life that families, conventional or otherwise, often stumble into ... Even in the midst of its most convoluted relations and plot twists, Reproduction remains relatable, as moving as it is hilarious. Indeed, Williams’ guile is often in the way this sly, pervasive humour serves as a kind of Trojan Horse, dismantling readers’ defences so that the moments of raw emotion hit harder. And it’s often at these moments that the real tenderness of Reproduction shines through[.]
... takes its structure from the organizing principles of cells and chromosomes: As characters reproduce, perspectives multiply and propagate, too, producing symmetries across generations and families. And, just as cells do over time, the novel’s form begins to break down, mutate ... Williams’s imaginative, intricate tapestries are dazzling, but the story sometimes feels narrow and deterministic. Few of the characters have attachments beyond the principal cast, and those who do downplay them in ways that feel artificial ... is at its best when Williams’s ornate arrangements of life and death feel fragile and unpredictable. He excels at transferring the intensity and action of traumatic events to the doldrums between: phone calls, haircuts, waiting rooms, car rides. In his rich probes of language and intimacy, legacy and inheritance, he slyly shows that reproduction is consequential, but so is everything else.
Reproduction, a novel by Ian Williams, manages to be witty, playful, and disarmingly offbeat—even as it hums with serious themes. The author proves unable to sustain this winning combination until the end, but by then has long since succeeded in fashioning a sharp and engaging tale out of the thinnest of conceits ... In the story’s final section, set in the present day, Williams, perhaps anxious to bolster its dramatic credentials, unwisely opts for a heavy-handed approach. Heavy-handed and (deliberately) circular ... Don’t despair. Latter-stage ponderousness aside, Reproduction maintains a brisk pace and a light touch. That’s quite a feat when you realize the extent to which the story wrestles with pressing social issues ... it is a mirror with graffiti/social commentary both humourous and powerful scrawled all over it.
... the family narrative allows Williams to dig deeply into the culture and events of the time ... Williams creatively and masterfully intersperses poetry, dialog, humor, pregnant asides, music lyrics, and descriptive passages to reveal what is going on inside the characters’ heads and outside in the world around them ... There is a breathless quality to the novel, and at times Williams appears to take on too much. Nevertheless, this work successfully examines major themes of empathy, responsibility, secrecy, race, multiculturalism, misogyny, and honesty.
Everything here sounds off-kilter—on purpose. Discomfort pervades the reading, whether conversations are awkwardly not-quite-synched between speakers, or sentences spoken in an (unnamed) Caribbean island patois are made purposefully wooden and German words and phrases become virtually unintelligible. That jagged performance, however, seems integral to Williams’ 2019 Giller Prized debut novel, in which the disquieting delivery unexpectedly enhances an already unique on-the-page, meant-to-disrupt presentation ... Words don’t quite do justice here: to better interpret what’s in the ears, visual clarification with a print copy is highly recommended (which is why libraries exist!).
... inventive ... While the dizzying shuffle of voices and complicated structure occasionally overtax the reader, Williams’s unsparing view on the past’s repetition is heartrending. This ambitious experiment yields worthwhile results.
The novel contains a sly but sharp critique of power ... what pulls the reader along are Williams’ playful, brilliant formal innovations: song lyrics annotated from Heather’s point of view, a bravura section organized in the form of a numbered list that cycles through each character’s stream-of-consciousness and humanizes everyone involved. The last section, by contrast, drags as it attempts to tie together the novel’s themes into a neat yet unsatisfying bow. A witty, formally thrilling family saga that feels about 100 pages too long.
