At Vulture.com Hillary Kelly tagged
seven great books on female friendship not written by Elena Ferrante, including:
Eleven Hours, by Pamela Erens (2001)
Lore and Franckline’s relationship lasts only the titular 11 hours: Lore labors and delivers her baby, without a partner, in a New York City hospital; and Franckline, the maternity nurse, moves from enemy to confidant. Franckline brings with her the traumas of earlier deliveries (“her body once birthed a child, and ever since then it has ached to be a shelter again”) and worries over her own second-trimester pregnancy. Lore resolutely clings to her “multipage, many-bulleted” birth plan, but over the hours, as the two women face the agonies of childbirth and uprooted memories, they forge an unimaginable friendship. Eleven Hours is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the light-speed transformation that women undergo from labor to delivery.
Read about
another entry on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
