Review: The Possibilities – Yael Goldstein-Love

This book is very hard to categorize. The best I’ve managed so far is litfic sci-fi about adjusting to motherhood. It’s an interesting read but one that seems to lose itself and its message sometimes.

Ever since the birth of her son Jack eight months ago, Hannah has been on edge. Her therapist says it’s just a lingering response to his traumatic birth but Hannah isn’t wholly convinced. And on quite possibly the worst day of her life, suddenly Jack disappears and then reappears from the lobby of her therapist’s building. Was it just a hallucination brought on by a lack of sleep, as her therapist thinks? Of is it an omen of even worse things to come?

“I was a suspense writer for goodness’ sake. Fear was my mother tongue. But this level of fear right now, these past eight months, every second since the moment Jack was born. This level of fear was something altogether different, something that broke open the rules of how the world worked.”

As someone who had postpartum anxiety, it was all too easy to identify with Hannah. Parts of the book were painful to read – as I imagine they’d be for most people – but there were also parts that had me yelling “yes, that!”. While Hannah’s diagnosis was different, it cropped up in similar ways in her life. I was also part of a postpartum support group and the women there, while not the cast of characters that Hannah meets, were also a lifeline and a comfort in one of the darkest periods of my life. All that is to say that I found Hannah’s experiences of motherhood and her postpartum experience very realistic.

Hannah is a horror author but hasn’t written a word since Jack’s birth, turning down every nanny share her husband Adam has arranged. Instead she’s filled her days with the minutiae of Jack’s life, never more than an arm’s reach away, subsuming herself in the search of perfect motherhood. Any one who’s ever parented a baby – or interacted with the parent of a young baby – can probably guess how well that’s going. Since Adam’s reaction to the stress of parenting is to research and plan out everything in detail – and you can also guess how well babies and plans mix – it’s led to frustration and resentment on both sides.

My main issue with the book was the uneven pacing. The sections that were paced like a suspense novel were engrossing. The more introspective sections however had some repetetive items. Perhaps it was for lit fic fans who would be unfamiliar with the sci-fi concepts but some of their explanations felt especially belabored. The concepts themselves though, while a common sci fi trope, had an interesting spin that I enjoyed in terms of Hannah’s predicament.

“I’m so afraid,” I finally said.
Adam took one step closer.
“I know you are. That’s always when you start to ride the possibilities.”

Overall, an interesting exploration of motherhood through a sci-fi lens.

Content notes: View Spoiler »child death, child in danger, grief, anxiety, depression, postpartum PTSD « Hide Spoiler

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