RavePublic BooksIf there is a way forward for the pandemic novel, it may be in these claustrophobic settings that Donoghue maps out, where too much dying and too much loving press together in a tight space ... The most vivid stories in this novel leave their traces on the body, rather than the history books—a bruised wrist, a scarred arm, a swollen leg ... unmistakably a war novel, but the battles take place on the engorged and furrowed flesh of the women themselves ... Donoghue is an important writer for this moment. She has the unique ability to make visceral our fears around childbirth and childrearing and to create gothic scenes of maternal claustrophobia in which those fears are realized. Her approach could be defined, for lack of a better word, as contraction: the narrowing and intensifying of the world. Here, in the kind of cramped spaces where readers now find themselves, is where Donoghue is at her best, creating an atmosphere of containment where enclosure is both comforting and terrifying at once—much like motherhood itself.