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The Need
Reader Score
63%
63% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 18 reviews on
***LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION*** "An extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers" (Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel). The Need, which finds a mother of two young children grappling with the dualities of motherhood after confronting a masked intruder in her home, is "like nothing you've ever read before...in a good way" (People).When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it's the sleep deprivation. She's been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It's what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty. Molly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion. In The Need, Helen Phillips has created a subversive, speculative thriller that comes to life through blazing, arresting prose and gorgeous, haunting imagery. "Brilliant" (Entertainment Weekly), "grotesque and lovely" (The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice), and "wildly captivating" (O, The Oprah Magazine), The Need is a glorious celebration of the bizarre and beautiful nature of our everyday lives and "showcases an extraordinary writer at her electrifying best" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Book Details
- Publisher: S&s/ Marysue Rucci Books
- Publish Date: Jul 7th, 2020
- Pages: 272
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.40in - 0.70in - 0.50lb
- EAN: 9781982113179
- Categories: • Thrillers - Military• Thrillers - Suspense• Thrillers - Political
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About the Author
Phillips, Helen: - Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including, most recently, the novel Hum. Her novel The Need was a National Book Award nominee and a New York Times Notable Book. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A professor at Brooklyn College, she lives in Brooklyn with artist/cartoonist Adam Douglas Thompson and their children. Find her online at HelenCPhillips.com or on X @HelenCPhillips.
More books by Helen Phillips
What people are saying
The Week
1 year
"This novel reads like a fever dream of maternal speculative horror…The story is riveting, and terrifying, but there's also so much truth here about how wildly strange the challenge of daily motherhood can be."
– Ashley Audrain is an author.
Show more
Critics’ reviews
Praise for this book
PRAISE FOR THE NEED BY HELEN PHILLIPS "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... 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...Everyday life, here, is both tedious and fascinating, grotesque and lovely, familiar and tremendously strange." -NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (EDITORS' CHOICE) "Brilliant...It's not hard to see why high-wattage contemporaries like Lauren Groff and Emily St. John Mandel have lavished praise...a sort of narrative nesting doll, a story infused with both essential home truths and a wild, almost unhinged sense of unreality....What Helen Phillips (The Beautiful Bureaucrat) builds from the first paragraphs is too clever, and moves too quickly, to be easily ground down in a review. Even the vaguely unfinished ending, less a full stop than a sort of pregnant pause, feels somehow right; a fitting coda to her spare, eerie marvel of novel, both beautifully familiar and profoundly strange. (A-)"-ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY "If the challenges of parenting young children have ever driven you to the brink, you'll recognize what's happening to Molly Nye-for about 10 pages. This fever dream of a novel starts like a thriller (someone's in the living room), morphs into speculative sci-fi (the intruder is from a separate universe) and ends up like nothing you've ever read before. In a good way."-PEOPLE "Molly's struggle to remain her full self while giving so much of herself away is electrifying...Mothers will recognize so much in this fresh novel - but they aren't the only ones who should read it. Phillips has found a way to make these experiences universal, acknowledging the importance of the other - the creature without whom none of us would exist."-WASHINGTON POST "A taut thriller...Between chills, readers will notice the pleasures of Phillips's prose. Her style combines the sensibility of a poet with the forward drive of a thriller...Phillips's crystalline style vividly evokes her characters. She draws them so precisely that before we know it, we're deep inside their lives...[A] bewitching, fiercely original novel."-BOSTON GLOBE "Hyponotically eerie...An ode to motherhood and a nightmarish rendering of its 'pleasures' and pains...Phillips structures her astonishing fifth book in edge-of-your-seat mini-chapters that infuse domesticity with a horror-movie level of foreboding, reminding us that the maternal instinct is indeed a primal one." -LEIGH HABER, O MAGAZINE "[A] wildly captivating speculative thriller...harrowing and surreal...you'll crave the next page. Phillips structures her astonishing fifth book in edge-of-your-seat mini-chapters that infuse domesticity with a horror-movie level of foreboding, reminding us that the maternal instinct is indeed a primal one."-O MAGAZINE "An unforgettable tour de force that melds nonstop suspense, intriguing speculation, and perfectly crafted prose...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."-PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW) "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... [A] superbly engaging re...
What people are saying
The Week
1 year
"This novel reads like a fever dream of maternal speculative horror…The story is riveting, and terrifying, but there's also so much truth here about how wildly strange the challenge of daily motherhood can be."
– Ashley Audrain is an author.