The Need

Helen Phillps has a wonderfully creative mind. I discovered The Need via its inclusion in my Scribd recommended reading feed. I was wholly captivated from word one of this extraordinary book. It was that good.

This is the first fiction audiobook I've read, and I could not have chosen a better first one. The lyrical, suspenseful prose grips you and never lets go until the last page (or spoken sentence, for that matter).

I tried to follow the storyline. I even pushed through and finished the book, but I'm so confused!

Dark, ambiguous ...and mesmeric. Comparable to “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.”

It's a good book overall but hard to follow at times.

I am still trying to track the story line...I just don’t know what the fuck happened.

I feel like I didn’t understand a word of it at all.

Wonderfully crafted. Loved every minute. Can’t wait to recommend to my friends.

Mind bending, suspenseful and creepy. Narration is perfect tone for the feeling of the book. I’m still processing the ending...but an excellent, creepy read.

Just strange. I did finish it rather quickly as it does move along nicely but I’m left feeling…unfulfilled and slight lot baffled. The narration was great and the storyline is definitely different.

Simply outstanding. Incredibly measured, tense, thoughtful prose; and an utterly unique storyline.

A strange intense book about motherhood. I liked it a lot, but it is not what it seems

Literally the worst book I’ve ever listened to. Storyline is so weak and rambling.

This is a pointless book, a complete waste of time.

I really wanted to know how it ended, made it halfway but just couldn't continue. The book was hard to follow and kept repeating.

Boy did this one start out strong! The alternating timelines/stories (and super short chapters) quickly built up the suspense through the first 2 Parts and really hooked me. Then the big reveal hit (Shock! Gasp!) and then the novel completely fizzled out.

What I thought was going to be a thriller-ish take on an alternate reality (multiverse) story told from the point of view of a mother trying to protect her children, instead turned into essentially the telling of a completely over-worked mother trying to parent her 2 young children while her husband was away. I really lost interest about 1/2 way through part 3 but I wanted to keep reading as I thought it would pick back up again, and it just never did.

Also: WAY too much emphasis on breastfeeding and her milk dropping. I understand that those are extremely important parts of mothering and welcome the topic in novels, but I just felt that the number of times the story told of Molly's milk and breasts was just too much.

The one bright spot I would certainly give to this novel is the way that Helen Philips wrote this novel (the use of language and metaphors) was really beautiful. The overall story direction just didn't do it for me.

Like a cross between Us and Annihilation! Very interesting and unique.

A few days ago, my sister, who generally dislikes fiction, got into my car. The book was in its early stages. This morning, after a few minutes of listening, she looked at me with a puzzled expression. I said, “Parallel universe.” She went on to ask what happened in the book that had been playing on Friday. Again, I said, “Parallel Universe.” On Friday, she had exited just after the intruder had left the main characters house. Which was suspenseful and well-written. We were both on the edge of our seats. At that point, I thought I had stumbled across a true story-teller. I pictured myself binging on her other books until I had read every last word. The story devolved rapidly. Then, it kept devolving. It devolved to the point that I listened only to see how much more ridiculously bad the story would become. It was bad. Really, bad. In fact, the two parts of the book are so different I’d speculate the author had a deadline to meet despite an earth-shattering bout of writers block she suffered partway through.

I picked this up because Laura van den Berg compared it to her excellent book The Third Hotel. Initially, I had my doubts, and when I encountered the big reveal early on I was tempted to set it aside. However, I continued reading and it just kept getting better and better. I highly recommend it.

That woman has the patience of a saint, I don't get it. If another me appeared and wanted to hang with our kids I'd be so down to swap in and out. Don't yell Mommy at me one more time or I will bang my head on the wall. (I feel like I have to add the standard disclaimer that I love my children more than life and take the best care of them, but I get OVERSTIMULATED). This book was overstimulating as well, but I found it very real and a little crazy.

The book started amazingly and had me quickly turning the pages, but then it fizzled into nothingness. At first I wondered if it was horror, fantasy, or science fiction, and I was thinking I had landed on a fantastic piece of fiction, but then it turned out to be pretty much a dud. I don't know what it was, honestly.

Hard to follow, well written book that has confusion, laughter and uhhhh.

It grabbed my interest from the beginning but lost me as the story kept on. I get it. But wouldn’t reread it. Little girl is a hoot though.

2 stars for awesome concept and moments of brilliance. But the execution and the ... story? Not remotely for me. And to be clear, I *am* a mom of a toddler. So I haven’t “forgotten,” I just don’t think this hits it. Not for me anyway.

I have no idea what was happening in this book...and it wasn't interesting enough to make my intense confusion worth it.

Far too tedious and repetitious, and it devolved into a fable about motherhood. But it started out distinctly science-fictiony and horror-inducing, in a concrete physical world. I imagine mothers might feel very differently about it, and might appreciate the homage to the tedium and repetition that is motherhood.

Motherhood is even more terrifying than I thought, but this book failed to keep things interesting the whole way through. Might have worked better as a short story for me.

In general, I don't select much science fiction reading. Occasionally, however, I stumble onto a novel and discover that it is sci-fi. Ok. That just happened. This book is a deep, deep dive into the psychology of motherhood in the midst of a collision between parallel universes. Yep. Imagine your worst day as a mother, as a working mother, and then multiply. An archeological dig unearths items from a parallel universe and then the games begin. Mom Molly and her doppelganger, Mol duke it out psychologically. Dad is out of town for work, so archeologist mom is stretched a bit thin. Enough. It's not bad, and that is coming from a non-sci-fi fan. Decide for yourself whether to take the plunge.

A book about the fears and pressures of motherhood, love, and loss, but told in a way that I wasn't expecting. The writing and imagery in this book kept me rapt and I just really loved this.

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 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.

I had to use gifs on Goodreads to describe my feelings about this one, because I can’t insert a selfie of my WTF expression. I’m not exaggerating: just check the reviews on Goodreads and you’ll see I’m not the only reader where the verb “confusion” is an understatement regarding this book. Some found it easy to understand, thus “brilliant”. Me on the other hand...⁣
Molly is a mother of two who works as a paleo botanist. During her excavation she comes across some odd artifacts, which draws the public’s interest. One night, while her husband is away, an intruder appears in Molly’s home, who seems to know everything about her, and Molly has to fight for everything she knows and loves. ⁣
Sounds like your typical domestic thriller, right? That’s where you would be wrong, my friend. I’m not going to reveal much about the plot, because this is one of those books that unless you read it for yourself, you’ll understand why it’s so difficult for me to explain it to you. I will say it is a brutally honest take on motherhood, particularly the ugly sides of it. I saw some reviews where readers were put off by the many mentions of nursing & pumping, and as a woman and a mother I have to roll my eyes at their brazen immaturity. ⁣
Reading this book I kept drawing comparisons to the movie “Tully”, and wondering if the reveal in the book (if there was one) would reflect the surprising one in the film. It might have? Or it may be something completely different? See, there is where I’ve become lost, readers. I’ve read the ending several times and I still can’t make sense of what happened. I’ve read spoiler filled reviews, but none of those explained it to me. So if you HAVE read this book and know what is going on, please DM me. ⁣
This was a quick little read, and I did enjoy the author’s writing style, even if I’m still confused by the substance. Some readers have compared this to “Bunny”, another bizarre book I read earlier. But to this reader, as bizarre as “Bunny” was, I understood the plot much more than I did here.