I really enjoyed listening to the Long Form. I liked the narrator and the explorations of topics relating to motherhood were thoughtful and well executed.

This book is quite a challenging read, blending essays on literary criticism, motherhood, and a fictional narrative following the lives of Helen and Rose. Its unique structure eschews a linear timeline, instead opting to jump around in time, much like the unpredictability of real life. This approach complements the author's fascination with the concept of time, especially in the long form of novels. While there were quite a few stunning books on motherhood published in 2023, this story stands out in its parallel exploration of the art of writing, translating into themes of motherhood and childrearing. It's a unique and genius approach, in my opinion.
Though the book can feel lengthy and chaotic at times, and I may have missed some moments of introspection, I ultimately enjoyed reading it. If you're seeking something more experimental and challenging, I recommend picking up this book!

Regarding the audiobook, I found some of the narrator's pronunciations to be a little drawn out for my taste and I wasn't particularly fond of it, But overall, it provided a satisfactory experience. Given the sporadic nature of the book and its frequent delve into topics like literary theory and philosophy, it's necessary to stay attentive while listening, otherwise you miss out on important details.
4.00 stars/5

A big thank you to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of this book.

This was an interesting story with in-depth characters, but it just didn’t grip me like I hoped it would. I enjoyed the conversations on social issues and think that a lot of people would really enjoy this book. There were good messages to take from this and it was very thought provoking.

My thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Audio for the opportunity to listen to and review this book.

This mystical, almost ethereal novel’s title comes from the French theorist of postmodernism, Jacques Barthes, who used it to distinguish the novel from other forms. For all that, it is not a novel in conventional structure or narrative, as can be expected by this hint alone. Briggs does not merely hint, however. She makes consistent reference to Barthes and many other literary critics, writers, philosophers, and even Dr D. W. Winnicott, a British child rearing expert with a substantial international following during the 1950s and 1960s. Helen watched old footage of his lectures online.

This is really a series of brief essays that « deconstruct » novel writing—focusing here on the « first novel », Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones. On the level of everyday life, Helen, about whom few details are revealed, is a new and very sleep-deprived mother tentatively trying to interpret the needs and wants of her six week old baby, Rose. This is the story’s main action. Helen spends her every non-sleeping moment trying to nurse, calm, comfort and engage her baby. Rose responds in newborn fashion, crying, fussing, nursing constantly and occasionally, mercifully, sleeping, which she does best in Helen’s arms, often still at her breast.

Into this intimate mother-baby dyad lands the Fielding novel that Helen had ordered. No real reason for that particular choice is explained, but Briggs’ novel looks very much like Fielding’s. It is structurally a series of brief essayistic chapters, with titles punctuated by long dashes, just like Tom Jones. Once Helen starts to read it, in snatches and stolen moments, often with the baby attached to her body or dosing lightly in the way of newborns, she begins to interweave her reading, her thoughts about the book, the thoughts of a pantheon of literary experts, her thoughts about their thoughts, her thoughts and actions regarding Rose, and the baby’s own imagined musings as « read » in her infant movements and noises.

I found Briggs’ writing remarkably clear and even lyrical, especially considering how complex a work this is. It helps to know that she has a sterling reputation as a translator, especially of Barthes. This is her first work of fiction. It is truly an awe-inspiring debut, thought-provoking and insightful. Her depiction of mother-baby interaction can only come from experience. I’ve never read such a visceral evocation of that tender/suffocating bond of pure love and terror that first mothers feel, the insecurity and anxiety that make simply holding a baby something requiring expert intervention. Or the unreal outrage experienced when all efforts to get a baby to sleep are ruined by a random doorbell—here it’s the delivery of the novel.
This is, however, a book that requires some earlier knowledge of her references, or a willingness to find out about them, in order to understand most of it, especially since it is very long and multi-layered as well as multi -referential. I also think it is a book better read than heard, dipped into and re-read, slowly. There are times when it seems nothing less than a literature doctorate will do. It’s timeframe is so compressed for the vastness of what is discussed that it really should be given the time it takes.