Review: The Need

The Need by Helen Phillips
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For being a novel classified as speculative fiction (yes, I just learned the name of this specific genre, even though I have had a clear preference for it all along - who knew? Obviously not me), it was one of the most REALISTIC and RAW narratives I have ever come across. I can now confidently proclaim that I know what it would feel like to be a mother after spending “a day in the life” of Molly. And as someone with no children, I realize how incredibly incorrect and mildly offensive that statement probably is, but I refuse to take it back and you can’t make me.

But - back to this being speculative fiction (I’ll get sick of using my new word soon, I promise). If you ask me, “Nicole, what is your favorite part sci-fi, part conspiracy theory concept?” My enthusiastic response will always be “Why it’s the Mandela Effect and the possibility of parallel universes, of course!” The second this story introduced The Pit, and the corresponding not quite from our universe artifacts uncovered there - yup. Sign me up because I’m fully invested in what is being sold.

Now with that said, we by no means get a balls out sci-fi thrill ride from this book. But what we get instead is a tense, eerily realistic portrayal of the constant and overwhelming terrors, joys, worries, exhaustions and what - ifs? of motherhood, and somewhat of life in general. You’d think I’d be disappointed that my beloved parallel universe plot line isn’t fully fleshed out or explained or explored to it’s fullest potential, but somehow I am not. That’s how intense and intriguing everything else within the walls of this novel is.

Was Molly’s alternate universe doppelgänger, Moll, real? Did The Pit actually have the ability to allow multiple realities to merge? Is Molly simply a woman, too in tune with her and her children’s mortality, too aware of the endless possibilities of potential failures and successes in life, that she’s created a world in which all of these possibilities both exist, and yet don’t exist at the same time? A woman so engrossed with love and hate, dread and desire, hopelessness and motivation - she’s essentially living a life that is both hers and also not hers? (I’m putting my bets on that one).

Hell, it doesn’t matter in the end. That’s the beauty of this novel - it gives you everything - and yet clarifies nothing. I absolutely see why this is a book many people dislike - and I could easily dislike it as well (seeing as though breast milk and the ever leaking nipples associated with it aren’t something I can relate to), but I am too busy being impressed to complain.

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