Covers for The Need and In West Mills
The Need by Helen Phillips
Helen Phillips鈥櫬犅爁inds Molly, a paleobotanist and mother of two, in a fight to protect her children from a foe who is both terrifying and shockingly familiar. Called at once a thriller, science fiction, and a literary novel, the book resists categorization. 鈥淭here are a lot of genres I鈥檓 borrowing from,鈥� says Phillips when asked whether mixed genres were on her mind when she began to write the novel.
鈥淭he central conceit of the book is a speculative or science fiction element. And since it鈥檚 been published, although I was not thinking of this as I was writing it, people have called it horror as well.
So I get a lot of energy out of borrowing from other genres. Still, I borrowed from them because I was not able to express what I needed to without them. It was the only way I could see to write about this ferocity and dread and ecstasy of maternal love. I had to have the thriller-like momentum. I had to have the perfect nemesis arising out of the cosmic void. I needed those things in order to express it because I think for me that makes it more concrete, it makes the metaphor feel more lived in. So I鈥檓 borrowing from them, but I don鈥檛 think the book is them.鈥�
In West Mills by De鈥橲hawn Charles Winslow
鈥檚 debut novel聽, set in the eponymous fictional North Carolina town, focuses on Azalea 鈥淜not鈥� Centre and her best friend and next-door neighbor Otis Lee over several decades. The characters are based on people from an earlier era in Winslow鈥檚 hometown of South Mills. The author set out to write what he calls a 鈥渃ommercial鈥� book. 鈥淭o be honest, I did not want to write a literary novel, because I wanted to write to people like the people in my novel. I wanted to make it as accessible as possible with not a lot of figuring out involved,鈥� he says, smiling. 鈥淲hen I started to send it out, people just kept referring to it as literary, literary. And I said, 鈥業t鈥檚 not what I was going for, but I guess that鈥檚 what I did.鈥� 鈥�
Winslow first tried to write an essay after his father died. Eventually, he scrapped the project and decided to write short stories. In West Mills was a story that grew to be an entire book, creating the people his parents might have met and known in their early lives. 鈥淚 had to take what little bit I knew about the real people in his life and build on it, make up the rest, to try to answer things about his life that I had no way of finding out,鈥� says Winslow about his father. He also tapped into a subject that is rarely explored in literature: platonic friendships between heterosexual people of the opposite sex. In his novel, the character of Azalea eschews a conventional romance by choosing moonshine over her boyfriend, but forges a solid friendship with her neighbor, a married man.
鈥淭here is a tendency to make protagonists like that into love interests,鈥� says Winslow of his characters. 鈥淥ne of my mother鈥檚 best friends was a man. I think people thought they were courting each other, but they weren鈥檛. And my father was completely fine with this relationship because he knew they had a history before him that was not romantic. I think that鈥檚 part of the reason I did that in my novel.鈥�
鲍苍濒颈办别听In West Mills, where Winslow built a story around the imagined life of his father and his friends,聽The Need, although not autobiographical, turns inward. At its core is an intense examination by the author of the life of a working mother, mixing what she calls 鈥渕undane domestic moments with existential questions about what it means to have an identity and what it means to be a mother. The most cosmic questions are contained in daily life,鈥� she adds. Along with the everyday fear of doing it wrong that can come to a person navigating parenthood, Phillips shares the sometimes-surreal experiences that come with being a mother, specifically breastfeeding.
鈥淭hough it is a very instinctual thing, it is also a science fiction thing: You become a food source for another creature and your body is generating milk. I craved representation of this experience, and it seemed like such rich territory for writing about because it is such a concrete manifestation of the bond between a mother and child. It鈥檚 a river of milk connecting you to your child. I really conceived of聽The Need聽as largely being a book about the body and the way the body bears love and the way the body bears grief. And for me, breast milk was an essential part of that.鈥�
Phillips will again turn to science as a driving theme in her next novel. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about climate change and technology, but it鈥檚 really through the lens of one particular family, and imagining a future where we have limited access to the natural world and where a lot of our daily experience involves technology.鈥�
Winslow says that going forward he will continue to explore platonic relationships between heterosexual men and women in everything he writes. 鈥淚鈥檓 also big on community-based tales.聽In West Mills聽has two main characters; this next project will have more. Not a large cast, but four characters to watch instead of two. And all four of them will be watching each other.鈥�
