The Need

Molly is a paleobotanist working at a private dig where they keep unearthing a surprising number of fossils of plants that haven't been found anywhere else. And then she starts finding odd 20th century objects -- a coke can where the logo tilts the wrong way, an altoids tin with slightly off dimensions, and the early 20th century Bible where all the pronouns for God are female. When she isn't digging in The Pit, Molly is taking care of her two kids -- 3 year old Viv and baby Ben, with the help of her loving musician husband and her breezy babysitter Erica. She is, as you might imagine, stressed and worn pretty thin, and that goes double when her husband leaves the country for a week-long tour. And then, after work and before getting show more dinner together, she sees a movement out of the side of eye in the living room. She tells herself it is nothing and then, while nursing Ben, Viv asks "who's that man?" That "man" knows everything about Molly and her kids and the slow reveal of what is going on with the intruder and the weird artifacts at The Pit is a page turner of a visceral psychological suspense / horror / sci-fi (?) / literary novel with a deep grounding in the experience of motherhood. Warning: There is A LOT of breast milk in this baby. I found it all very compelling and the characterization of the sleep-deprived Molly and the personalities of her kids rang very true. I'm not a mom, but the intensity and exhaustion of the experience of having two young kids rang true for me as well. The first part of the book in particular gave me some If I Had Legs I'd Kick You vibes, which is a very good thing. show less

(Review of an ARC picked up at a local bookstore.) This is a powerful little novel from the talented Helen Phillips. Not since I read "Room" have I felt such an intense sense of 'mother dread' that only comes from reading great fiction about protecting children, about what it really takes to be there for them as a parent 24 hours a day / 7 days a week.
This is unusual speculative fiction, complete with sleep deprivation, breast feeding, a very strange archaeological site, and an especially questionable narrator. Not soon forgotten and a great book to discuss after reading.

great idea, less than riveting execution. There is, however one passage in the book (end of chp 7) that I consider one of the best/scariest moments in written horror: "She relished the unpleasant kiss. She said to Viv, 'Okay, okay, okay- wait, I still don't know where The Why Book is, did you and Erika find it?' She stepped out of the bedroom and walked to the bathroom, just a few steps. If she hadn't been passing through the hall at that exact instant, she would have missed it: the lid of the coffee-table-toy-chest lifting up a centimeter and then immediately, gently, sinking back down."

The pacing of the story up to this exact point is stellar; you truly feel lulled into a sense of casual curiosity which makes the first appearance show more of "the intruder" all the more terrifying. Unfortunately, while the story seems to hit its stride in the following few chapters, it slowly slopes off and becomes more of a sci-fi meets Single White Female (1992) meditation on the pressures of mother/adult/womanhood which, while I totally respect, isn't really my bag. show less

An exceptionally creative and disturbing novel - one that leaves you thinking at the end not only for the mysterious ending but for the philosophical questions it brings to life. What would you do if you discovered an alternative world, one that threatened your own but was also somehow intrinsically bound with it to - to destroy one is to destroy the other? What is "reality?". What is love? What is everything that we take for granted - people, relationhips, even the stuff of our every day lives - really? This would make a fantastic book discussion! I really pondered giving it 5 stars but I reserved that for truly exceptional books - and while this was oh so close (for disturbing creativity if for nothing else) I've reluctantly given it 4.

Tough Work

“Tough” is a word that describes the faceted character of Helen Phillips’ protagonist Molly in The Need. Molly, a paleobotanist and mother of a toddler and infant, works at an excavation and at home, and both places are challenging and increasingly difficult. She’s a woman grappling with her emotions, and maybe losing her mind, both regarding the extraordinary items she’s found in the excavation pit and at home, where her peripatetic musician husband leaves her to care for their two young children, and where she comes to face two sides of life, with her children, and without them. Marginally, it’s a horror tale, but at its heart it’s more a meditation on the hardships of modern working mothers who carry show more responsibilities for work and home, and sometimes find themselves schizophrenic over the whole deal.

Molly has discovered some disturbing items during an excavation, items that shouldn’t be there, like a bottle of Coke with the name slanted in the wrong direction, flora that have no evolved descendants, and, most troubling of all for the furor it arouses, a bible with the wrong pronoun. It’s this last item that draws people to the site to marvel and violently express hatred. Could these be items that have leaked over into our world from a parallel dimension, where things might appear the same but also vastly different?

All this upsets her to the point that at home she begins believing that an intruder has entered her home. Sure enough, one has and as the book promo hints, it is one who knows way too much about her. To reveal the intruder here would spoil the one startling aspect of the novel for you. But it’s this intruder who launches Molly into an ongoing dialogue with herself regarding the care of her children, from the often frustrating mundane tasks of care that she relishes as love, to the fear of what it would be like to lose them. Not that she wasn’t tough before this experience, but she emerges tougher, stronger in all regards, after it.

If you discount the supposed horror and the parallel worlds aspect of the novel, many readers will find things to like about The Need. Women readers with children will readily identify with Molly, particularly with all she has to do, for the burdens of child rearing fall squarely on her shoulders. Male readers might find the constant enumeration of Molly’s tasks, of her concerns for her children, of the loneliness of being left alone pretty much to fend for herself for long periods of time, and of continuously battling herself over whether she’s mother enough, revealing and, maybe, helpful in better appreciating their partners. As to the horror and multidimensional component, if you buy the book with this in mind, you’ll certainly find yourself disappointed. show less

Tough Work

“Tough” is a word that describes the faceted character of Helen Phillips’ protagonist Molly in The Need. Molly, a paleobotanist and mother of a toddler and infant, works at an excavation and at home, and both places are challenging and increasingly difficult. She’s a woman grappling with her emotions, and maybe losing her mind, both regarding the extraordinary items she’s found in the excavation pit and at home, where her peripatetic musician husband leaves her to care for their two young children, and where she comes to face two sides of life, with her children, and without them. Marginally, it’s a horror tale, but at its heart it’s more a meditation on the hardships of modern working mothers who carry show more responsibilities for work and home, and sometimes find themselves schizophrenic over the whole deal.

Molly has discovered some disturbing items during an excavation, items that shouldn’t be there, like a bottle of Coke with the name slanted in the wrong direction, flora that have no evolved descendants, and, most troubling of all for the furor it arouses, a bible with the wrong pronoun. It’s this last item that draws people to the site to marvel and violently express hatred. Could these be items that have leaked over into our world from a parallel dimension, where things might appear the same but also vastly different?

All this upsets her to the point that at home she begins believing that an intruder has entered her home. Sure enough, one has and as the book promo hints, it is one who knows way too much about her. To reveal the intruder here would spoil the one startling aspect of the novel for you. But it’s this intruder who launches Molly into an ongoing dialogue with herself regarding the care of her children, from the often frustrating mundane tasks of care that she relishes as love, to the fear of what it would be like to lose them. Not that she wasn’t tough before this experience, but she emerges tougher, stronger in all regards, after it.

If you discount the supposed horror and the parallel worlds aspect of the novel, many readers will find things to like about The Need. Women readers with children will readily identify with Molly, particularly with all she has to do, for the burdens of child rearing fall squarely on her shoulders. Male readers might find the constant enumeration of Molly’s tasks, of her concerns for her children, of the loneliness of being left alone pretty much to fend for herself for long periods of time, and of continuously battling herself over whether she’s mother enough, revealing and, maybe, helpful in better appreciating their partners. As to the horror and multidimensional component, if you buy the book with this in mind, you’ll certainly find yourself disappointed. show less

A terrifically promising premise but the prose is very flat and the action so repetitive that I ended up feeling like it could have made a good short story. Also it’s one of those stories that relies on the protagonist keeping a secret so large and ridiculously against her interest to keep that I couldn’t take her dilemma any more seriously than I can feel sorry for those kids in horror films who insist on investigating the noise in the basement themselves rather than calling 911.

This premise could have, with a better editor, become either 1) a novel about the existential terror of motherhood—if any of us stopped to think about the real possibility of losing our young child, would we ever risk having one?—OR 2) a novel show more exploring an interesting and worthy sci fi premise....

but in this case both possibilities are hinted at and then left half baked.

I liked the author’s deep attention to the rhythms of early motherhood, and the breast pump scenes were particularly spot on, but on the whole this was a skipper. show less