The Need starts like a thriller: a mother crouches in the bedroom closet with her baby and her four-year-old daughter, because she heard footsteps in the living room. The next chapter introduces some science fiction: the mother works as a paleobiologist at a site where they've discovered plants that don't fit into the accepted fossil record. The chapters in Part 1 alternate between these two scenes, until the mother discovers the identity of the intruder.
A perfect novel maintains a precarious balance between actions that make sense narratively and actions that make sense thematically. The author's main purpose in The Need appears to be to capture the psychological strain of being a parent, and she came up with a creative way to present it. The main character's actions make more sense in pursuit of this theme than they do as realism. For example, her decision to not tell her husband what was happening felt unrealistic to me, but it makes sense when seen through the lens of the theme of motherhood.
A perfect novel maintains a precarious balance between actions that make sense narratively and actions that make sense thematically. The author's main purpose in The Need appears to be to capture the psychological strain of being a parent, and she came up with a creative way to present it. The main character's actions make more sense in pursuit of this theme than they do as realism. For example, her decision to not tell her husband what was happening felt unrealistic to me, but it makes sense when seen through the lens of the theme of motherhood.
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