The need A novel

Review by New York Times Review

AS OPENING CHAPTERS GO, this One from "The Need" does not mess about: A mother crouches in the corner of a darkened bedroom, straining to listen, holding her small children close and willing them not to make a sound. Molly has heard footsteps in the next room. An intruder is moving around her house. "Her desperation for her children's silence manifested as a suffocating force, the desire for a pillow, a pair of thick socks, anything she could shove into them to perfect their muteness and save their lives." There are several threats here. The reader is immediately on edge, fearful not simply for Molly, but about her. Are we safe with her? Are her children? "Another step. Hesitant, but undeniable. Or maybe not." In her other life Molly is a paleobotanist, a scholar specializing in plant fossils. Searching for clues and connections at the bottom of a 20-foot excavation pit, she keeps "pressing even farther into the earth, hoping that someday it would all fall into place. Nonsense converting, wondrously, to sense." She excavates her emotional life in the same manner, layer by layer, and because she knows herself well, she doubts herself. Even as she cowers in the bedroom - trying to quiet baby Ben and Viv, her exuberant, chatty toddler; wishing her husband, David, weren't on a plane bound for another continent - she suspects she might be imagining the whole thing. Attempting to orient herself in motherhood, Molly finds only "a cosmic precariousness." All her certainties have been upended, the rumble underfoot signifying an earthquake rather than a garbage truck. Molly has lived in this state of heightened anxiety since Viv's birth, and Viv is about to turn 4, an event that will be marked with the usual festive junk: juice boxes, rainbow sprinkles, a piñata. But celebrations do not mean respite. At all times Molly is "acutely aware of the abyss, the potential injury flickering within each second." Perhaps the surges of adrenaline and cortisol have warped her perceptions a little because her grasp on reality seems to be slipping, both at home and at work, where the pit has started to yield unlikely items (most notably a Bible with a curious misprint). David attributes her state of mind to sleep deprivation and dehydration. He may have a point. Possibly it's more serious than that. So Molly does not feel equipped to confront the intruder, but she does it anyway. This is when Helen Phillips's novel begins to reveal itself, veering away from what looks initially like conventional suspense into something more speculative and philosophical with nods to both sci-fi and horror. (Its preoccupations as well as its frankness reminded me a little of another recent genre-busting exploration of motherhood: Diablo Cody's marvelous 2018 film "Tully.") Molly believes herself "immobilized by what-ifs," but the what-ifs animate this novel, the narrative splitting and looping back on itself as it tries out parallel possibilities, various fantasies and nightmares. Phillips favors a succession of rapid-fire chapters, some only a few sentences long, and at several points the timeline breaks up so that each new section requires a significant recalibration. The reader, trying to keep track of the chronology, trying hard to make sense of it all, feels the full force of Molly's panic, the unruly runaway velocity of her life: "She was always hurrying to get ready for work, hurrying to put the groceries away ... every single thing in life shoved between the needs of a pair of people who weighed a cumulative 57 pounds." Like parenthood itself, "The Need" is frightening and maddening and full of dark comedy. Molly may be wrestling with the big existential questions (the irreconcilable tidal pull of her rival identities) but she's doing this while finding peas in the freezer, organizing an ocean-themed birthday party, wrangling kids in the grocery store. Very occasionally at work she is able to forget her utilitarian obligations, and this comes as a vast relief. "Her focus took hold of her and time passed around her. In the pit, in times of observation, she forgot that she was a mother. That she existed at all, really, except as a pair of eyes and hands." But that other world is insistent - for a start, her milk keeps coming down at inappropriate moments - and won't be shut out for long. Yes, this is how it feels, to spend your days in the company of tiny despots whose wit and energy far outstrip your own. Here it is, the mess, the crazy conversation, the endless strategic bargaining. '"But we have to finish the shopping,' Molly said. 'Remember the juice boxes? You can have one as soon as we pay for it.' She didn't respect herself, her never-ending tactics and bribery." Phillips, as careful with language as she is bold with structure, captures many small sharp truths. She is very good on drudgery and tiredness and marital resentment: "Sometimes you had to hate the person who was using the toilet or taking a shower or at work or sleeping or doing any other indulgent thing while you were caught in the cyclone of your children's needs." She evokes a baby's beginner steps, "so dainty, halting and sticky," and the peculiar exotic novelty of a newish mother finding herself out alone at dusk: "This was the time of day when her home demanded everything of her. Once in a while she would peek out the window at the tail end of a sunset. But always she was needed inside." With forensic precision Phillips identifies the price a parent will pay for tuning out just for a second, because that will certainly be the second when someone rolls off the bed or gets a finger trapped in the door. There is even a bravura section toward the end when everyone comes down with a stomach bug. The novel, it should be said, may well mystify nonparents. It may even mystify parents who have forgotten the reality of the early years. Perhaps these people will judge Molly - as she judges herself - for not being able to cope alone, for falling apart when her (affectionate and perceptive) husband is out of town. But she has my sympathies. I would like to tell her it does get easier. And, you know, more fun. "She wouldn't mind sitting quietly for five minutes and drinking something, tea or wine, before playing with the children. "But the children were already playing with her." Everyday life, here, is both tedious and fascinating, grotesque and lovely, familiar and tremendously strange. Molly - worrying about the person she is becoming, and whether that person can adequately meet a family's needs, let alone her own - is finally alive to it all, to its terrors but also, on those rare occasions when everyone is happy (or asleep), to its incandescent joys. Harriet lane is the author of "Alys, Always" and "Her."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 4, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

Since her first child was born, Molly has experienced moments of disorientation, misinterpreting what she hears or sees. As the book opens, she is upstairs with her children, Viiv, about to turn four, and Ben, not quite one, on the night her husband, David, has left for a week on business. Molly thinks she hears noises downstairs but dismisses the sounds as another of her episodes. Phillips teases out this tension to an almost unbearable level, jumping from what's happening in the house to accounts of Molly's work as a paleobotanist on a controversial dig. Then what happens vaults Molly into a different, terrifying dimension that she's unable to explain to David on their video calls. Here Phillips (The Beautiful Bureaucrat, 2015) explores issues of identity, responsibility, the burden of constant alertness for the sake of young children and their safety, and the relief of sharing this burden. But central to it all is the absolutely fierce love a mother has for her children, a love beside which everything else pales. A skilfully crafted, thought-provoking domestic thriller best for readers willing to embrace ambiguity.--Michele Leber Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Phillips (The Beautiful Bureaucrat) delivers an unforgettable tour de force that melds nonstop suspense, intriguing speculation, and perfectly crafted prose. While excavating a fossil quarry, paleobotanist Molly Nye and her colleagues find plant fossils unconnected to all previously identified species and random objects-a Bible describing God as "she," a toy soldier with a monkey's tail, a Coke bottle with a backwards-tilting logo-with odd, seemingly pointless differences from their everyday counterparts. She feels uneasy when news of the Bible draws gawkers to the site, but anxiety is no stranger to Molly; balancing work with her nursing baby and feisty four-year-old, she struggles with "apocalyptic exhaustion" and a constant fear that disaster is about to strike her kids. While her musician husband, David, is performing abroad, real danger arrives in the form of a black-clad intruder, who wears the gold deer mask David gave Molly for her birthday and knows intimate details of Molly's life. As the stranger's mask comes literally and figuratively off en route to a startling conclusion to their confrontation, Molly veers between panic, appeasement, and empathy for an "other" whose story is uncannily like her own except in its tragedies. Structured in brief, sharply focused segments that shift back and forth in time, the novel interrogates the nature of the self, the powers and terrors of parenting, and the illusions of chronology. Yet it's also chock-full of small moments-some scary, some tender, some darkly witty-that ground its cerebral themes in a sharply observed evocation of motherhood. With its crossover appeal to lovers of thriller, science fiction, and literary fiction, this story showcases an extraordinary writer at her electrifying best. Agent: Faye Bender, the Book Group. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Review by Library Journal Review

A woman confronts an intruder--and her own motherhood--in this gripping, shape-shifting second novel from Phillips (The Beautiful Bureaucrat). With her husband out of the country, paleobotanist Molly is home with their two young children when she hears footsteps coming from the living room. She's ready to dismiss it as house noise and put the kids to bed until her daughter asks, "Who's that guy?" The answer will shake Molly to the core and send her down a metaphysical rabbit hole that reads like a fever dream of every mother's fears. Molly is convinced the fossil quarry she is helping to excavate has unleashed a sinister force and that one of the found objects--a Bible that suggests God is female--has led some suspicious visitors to the site. Whether Molly's true enemy is real or a manifestation of her deepest anxieties is a lingering question that Phillips, with incisive detail and linguistic dexterity, suggests comes with the territory of parenthood. VERDICT Is this literary work a story of magical realism, a straight-up horror novel featuring home invaders and shadow-selves, or a product of Molly's exhausted imagination? Of course, it's all of the above and makes for an unforgettable--and polarizing--reading experience. [See Prepub Alert, 1/23/19.]--Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An intruder upends the life of a young mother and paleobotanist, prompting her to recalibrate her relationships with her family, her work, and, most importantly, herself.One evening, with her husband out of town and her kids' babysitter gone for the day, Molly hears a noise. It could be the footsteps of an intruderor her own fears intruding on the cozy life of her family. Molly, a paleobotanist who has recently made some especially unusual finds at the defunct gas station adjacent to a fossil quarry in which she works, sometimes hears danger in the quotidian. For instance, she'll mistake the wail of a passing ambulance for that of her infant son or the groan of a cabinet hinge for her 4-year-old daughter's "impatient pre-tantrum sigh." Unsure if the threat is real or imagined, Molly scoops up her children and retreats to a corner of a bedroom, huddling in the dark, carefully considering how to protect her progeny and restore the chaotic tranquility of her home. What Molly ultimately discoversunexpectedly emerging from the toy chest that doubles as a coffee table in her living roompropels her on a surreal adventure in which she must (rather literally) confront herself and contend with her apprehensions and strengths, limitations and capabilities as a mother. Phillips' fuguelike novel, in which the protagonist's tormentor may be either other or self, is a parable of parenting and the anxieties that prey on mothers and fathers, amplified by exhaustion, sleeplessness, the weight of responsibility, and shifting identities and roles. It is also a superbly engaging readquirky, perceptive, and gently provocative. Molly may be losing her marbles, but we can't help rooting for her to find herself. While Phillips' exquisitely existential The Beautiful Bureaucrat (2015) found humanity, love, and hope in a dark, dystopian world, this novel locates them in the routine aspects of child-rearing, capturing not only the sense of loss and fear that often attends parenting, but also the moments of triumph and bliss.Suspenseful and mysterious, insightful and tender, Phillips' new thriller cements her standing as a deservedly celebrated author with a singular sense of story and style. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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The Need 1 She crouched in front of the mirror in the dark, clinging to them. The baby in her right arm, the child in her left. There were footsteps in the other room. She had heard them an instant ago. She had switched off the light, scooped up her son, pulled her daughter across the bedroom to hide in the far corner. She had heard footsteps. But she was sometimes hearing things. A passing ambulance mistaken for Ben's nighttime wail. The moaning hinges of the bathroom cabinet mistaken for Viv's impatient pre-tantrum sigh. Her heart and blood were loud. She needed them to not be so loud. Another step. Or was it a soft hiccup from Ben? Or was it her own knee joint cracking beneath thirty-six pounds of Viv? She guessed the intruder was in the middle of the living room now, halfway to the bedroom. She knew there was no intruder. Viv smiled at her in the feeble light of the faraway streetlamp. Viv always craved games that were slightly frightening. Any second now, she would demand the next move in this wondrous new one. Her desperation for her children's silence manifested as a suffocating force, the desire for a pillow, a pair of thick socks, anything she could shove into them to perfect their muteness and save their lives. Another step. Hesitant, but undeniable. Or maybe not. Ben was drowsy, tranquil, his thumb in his mouth. Viv was looking at her with curious, cunning eyes. David was on a plane somewhere over another continent. The babysitter had marched off to get a Friday-night beer with her girls. Could she squeeze the children under the bed and go out to confront the intruder on her own? Could she press them into the closet, keep them safe among her shoes? Her phone was in the other room, in her bag, dropped and forgotten by the front door when she arrived home from work twenty-five minutes ago to a blueberry-stained Ben, to Viv parading through the living room chanting "Birth-Day! Birth-Day!" with an uncapped purple marker held aloft in her right hand like the Statue of Liberty's torch. "Viv!" she had roared when the marker grazed the white wall of the hallway as her daughter ran toward her. But to no avail: a purple scar to join the others, the green crayon, the red pencil. A Friday-night beer with my girls. How exotic, she had thought distantly, handing over the wad of cash. Erika was twenty-three, and buoyant, and brave. She had wanted, above all else, someone brave to look after the children. "Now what?" Viv said, starting to strain against her arm. Thankfully, a stage whisper rather than a shriek. But even so the footsteps shifted direction, toward the bedroom. If David were home, in the basement, practicing, she would be stomping their code on the floor, five times for Come up right this second, usually because both kids needed everything from her at once. A step, a step? This problem of hers had begun about four years ago, soon after Viv's birth. She confessed it only to David, wanting to know if he ever experienced the same sensation, trying and failing to capture it in words: the minor disorientations that sometimes plagued her, the small errors of eyes and ears. The conviction that the rumble underfoot was due to an earthquake rather than a garbage truck. The conviction that there was something somehow off about a piece of litter found amid the fossils in the Pit at work. A brief flash or dizziness that, for a millisecond, caused reality to shimmer or waver or disintegrate slightly. In those instants, her best recourse was to steady her body against something solid--David, if he happened to be nearby, or a table, a tree, or the dirt wall of the Pit--until the world resettled into known patterns and she could once more move invincible, unshakable, through her day. Yes, David said whenever she brought it up; he knew what she meant, kind of. His diagnosis: sleep deprivation and/or dehydration. Viv squirmed out of her grasp. She was a slippery kid, and, with only one arm free, there was no way Molly could prevent her daughter's escape. "Stay. Right. Here," she mouthed with all the intensity she could infuse into a voiceless command. But Viv tiptoed theatrically toward the bedroom door, which was open just a crack, and grinned back at her mother, the grin turned grimace by the eerie light of the streetlamp. Molly didn't know whether to move or stay put. Any quick action--a hurl across the room, a seizure of the T-shirt--was sure to unleash a scream or a laugh from Viv, was sure to disrupt Ben, lulled nearly to sleep by the panicked bouncing of Molly's arm. Viv pulled the door open. Molly had never before noticed that the bedroom door squeaked, a sound that now seemed intolerably loud. It would be so funny to tell David about this when he landed. I turned off the light and made the kids hide in the corner of the bedroom. I was totally petrified. And it was nothing! Beneath the hilarity would lie her secret concern about this little problem of hers. But their laughter would neutralize it, almost. She listened hard for the footsteps. There were none. She stood up. She raised Ben's limp, snoozing body to her chest. She flicked the light back on. The room looked warm. Orderly. The gray quilt tucked tight at the corners. She would make mac and cheese. She would thaw some peas. She stepped toward the doorway, where Viv stood still, peering out. "Who's that guy?" Viv said. Excerpted from The Need: A Novel by Helen Phillips All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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