We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About The Need
Product Description ***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). Amazon.com Review Teeth-grindingly tense? Check. Mind-bogglingly surreal? Check. An ending you’re going to debate with your friends? Check. Helen Phillips playfully nudged the concepts of reality and fate in The Beautiful Bureaucrat, but this time she gives those concepts a big ol’ shove and then spins them like a top in The Need. When paleobotanist Molly uncovers strange artifacts at a dig—including a plastic toy soldier with a monkey tail and a Coke bottle with the letters slanted backward—the finds are intriguing but not alarming. But sleepless nights devoted to her two children under age 5, more weird discoveries, and inexplicable sounds twist into an acidic fear. And the source of these oddities, once revealed, is both more horrible and more sympathetic than Molly could ever imagine. Phillips makes motherhood a transcendent power even as she gives it a ferocious bite. Luckily The Need is a fast read, because I dare anyone to try to sleep after starting the first chapter. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review Review 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 r
