MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewThough the novel concludes — perhaps not entirely persuasively — on a note of hope, this fierce and relentless account of a family in crisis is almost unbearably bleak.
Anne Eekhout, trans. by Laura Watkinson
PanThe New York Times Book ReviewShe has set herself the task of conjuring the workings of Mary’s outrageous imagination as the first inklings of an idea take shape. Few novels have successfully suggested the murky swirl of impulse, instinct and experience behind real examples of great literary achievement ... But the business of novel-writing is often messy and tedious. Here, reading about it can also feel like hard work ... As we move between events at Cologny and the equally highly colored Dundee subplot, Mary and her companions seem increasingly stiff and unconvincing, trapped both by the sensational furniture of the novel...and the flatness of the writing ... The novel expends considerable effort to show that Mary’s great act of creativity, like that of Victor Frankenstein, came when she began to piece together all manner of strange and horrifying material. But whether Eekhout truly animates Mary, as Mary Shelley herself animated both Frankenstein and his creature, is a little less certain.
Charlotte McConaghy
MixedNew York Times Book ReviewEarly on, I began to worry that McConaghy wasn’t entirely in control of her material ... Though this small rural community turns out to be steeped in brutal secrets, much of the plot and characterization seems rushed and scrappy, a vehicle for environmental messaging ... This is a heartfelt and earnest novel — in every chapter, there’s evidence of a writer straining for the cathedral cadence, that elegiac note of aching significance — but sincerity doesn’t guarantee a satisfying read.
Daisy Johnson
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewBefore too long, the novel is exhibiting the vivid unreliability of a fever dream ... It’s a Gothic setup, a clutch of damaged individuals stuck in an isolated ruin, and Johnson’s bold and impressionistic writing locates the story on the boundary between fable and horror ... the narrative keeps circling back to past events, building up a powerful atmosphere of doom and dread in a manner that occasionally feels a little overwrought — as if nothing bad has been left unimagined ... a gripping ordeal, a relentlessly macabre account of grief and guilt, identity and codependency, teenage girls and their mothers. Crammed with disturbing images and powered by a dare-to-look-away velocity, it reminded me, in its general refusal to play nice, of early Ian McEwan.
Helen Phillips
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewMolly 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 ... Like parenthood itself, The Need is frightening and maddening and full of dark comedy ... 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 ... may well mystify nonparents ... Everyday life, here, is both tedious and fascinating, grotesque and lovely, familiar and tremendously strange.
Laura Lippman
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"Sunburn, though cool and twisty, has more heart than expected. It’s generous in other ways, too. The particular atmosphere of unlovely Belleville is deftly conveyed ... People move in and out of the narrative with their own baggage and preoccupations. What they choose to tell us is very subjective and not always directly relevant, and this clamor of voices gives the novel satisfying depth and texture. There’s a sense here that we’re brushing up against many lives, many versions of the truth.\
