The story of two people (Helen, a young mother, and her baby) composing their day together, when their day gets interrupted by a book. From here, Helen, her baby, and books spend the day together, entwined, along with the social realities Helen encounters in an everyday world of class and privilege, housing and care work, creativity and frienship.
The book comes to life in a way none other has for me — not a thing to be consumed but a force exerting its own energy on me ... Briggs’ voice takes over in the essay portions, and I would have been interested to see them dominate the entire book. In fact The Long Form feels like a novel leaning into an essay. True to the latter form’s intentions, it tries on various narrative styles to grasp at its subject ... Love is the medium of the book, shaping and moving it, opening and deepening it.
Briggs refuses what for most authors would be THE story: how Helen came to be a single mother. There are so many possible plotlines ... But, that is not this story. The deep, abiding love affair here is with Rebba, Helen’s best friend and former roommate ... Her book feels like a manifesto for something distributed, open, radical.
Expansive ... As much about new motherhood as it is about the novel as form ... Rhythm matters as much as shape ... Memorable ... Briggs’s novel, with its intertextual references, its mother and child bending towards one another, might be called a novel of leaning.
