Nettel, whose earlier work has at times veered toward the phantasmagoric, is all the more haunting here for her vivid realism. Still Born, translated by Rosalind Harvey, is a heart-racingly intense journey.
Fascinating ... Nettel fashions Laura as a unique and confounding narrator, with a voice that’s both judgmental and hyper-perceptive, perfect for delving into the reversals and contradictions of the story.
One of the welcome surprises of Still Born, however, is how quickly it swerves away from Laura’s anti-natalist campaigning, as if Laura, too, wanted out of her own head and into a broader web of experience ... Her story grows more polyphonic, less fixed and binary in its assumptions about care work and family-making.
