Helen Phillips

A chilling novel from a blazing talent...in addition to being a cerebral meditation on motherhood at its most elemental – fierce, beatific, sanity-thieving – it’s an adroitly executed thriller with a quasi-sci-fi twist. Mercilessly tense throughout, its opening chapter is a belter... A bracingly singular achievement, it’s surreal, blackly comic and ultimately generous.

[A] frenzied fever dream of a novel. Read it as a sci-fi thriller, or understand it instead as metaphorical; either way, it’s a page-turner… magnificent... This is a smart, sharp book that cuts to the heart of what it’s like to be a mother

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of this year’s most necessary novels.

The atmosphere is as close and taut as a thriller, but this is, in fact, both a highly original examination of grief and an extraordinarily vivid evocation of motherhood -- the moments of terror and hilarity, the visceral burden of it, and the fleeting, but almost transcendent, joy

Helen Phillips’s novel begins to reveal itself, veering away from what looks initially like conventional suspense into something more speculative and philosophical with nods to both sci-fi and horror... 
the what-ifs animate this novel, the narrative splitting and looping back on itself as it tries out parallel possibilities, various fantasies and nightmares... frightening and maddening and full of dark comedy.. Phillips, as careful with language as she is bold with structure, captures many small sharp truths

The Need is a profound meditation on the nature of reality, a fearless examination of parenthood, and also somehow a thriller. This is an extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers

Phillips writes exceptionally well of the insatiable demands two young children can make on a mother... yet this is also a horror story about the vulnerability of motherhood that doubles up as a love letter to the miracle existence of children. At the same time, Phillips consistently plays tricks with the reader's perspective...and with the possibility of parallel realities, rooted in a mother's worst possible fears, playing out at the level of science fiction... One of the most heart-stopping motherhood novels you'll read all year

So smart and brave about motherhood... Molly's struggle to remain her full self while giving so much away is electrifying... Mothers will recognize so much in this fresh novel -- but they aren't the only ones who should read it. Phillips has found a way to make these experiences universal

An enthralling book. With its short chapters, unsettling prose and riveting suspense, it feels designed for binge-reading. But keep an eye on the clock. Immersion in this novel before bedtime is a recipefor sleeplessness.

It’s a classic opening: a woman hears an intruder in her home while her husband is away, grabs her two young kids and hides in terror. But the true power of Helen Phillips’ brilliantly paced thriller emerges when Molly, a paleobotanist, comes face to face with the only person in the world who can shake her identity as a mother—a person who brings her to question her very reality. Phillips taps into the overwhelming anxiety that comes with love in its deepest, truest form, a sense of fierce protectiveness one need not be a parent to understand

An exciting, enjoyably eccentric novel that more than delivers as both a reality-warping thriller and a searching meditation on motherhood

The weirdness of everyday life is beautifully explored… The Need's true subject is motherhood, rendered here as a painful, visceral, almost impossibly tender undertaking. In contrast to this extreme normality, the supernatural elements tingle like bugs against the skin. In all, a grand achievement. The novel exists on that narrow borderlinewhere strangeness merges with the mundane, and Phillips is both an explorer, and a brilliant chronicler of this murky realm.

Sinister, existential and written in blazing prose

I love Helen Phillips's wild, brilliant, eccentric brain

Helen Phillips is one of the most exciting young writers working today, and I envy those who get to discover her work here for the first time

This book held me hostage, invaded my dreams and my waking thoughts, and readjusted my brain; Phillips is, as always, doing something at once wildly her own and utterly primal. Maybe it doesn't surprise me that the strangest book I've read about motherhood is also the best, but it does thrill me

Rebecca Makkai, author of THE GREAT BELIEVERS

Helen Phillips has created an existential page-turner that captures, with perfect sharpness, the fierce delirium of motherhood, the longing to understand the workings of our universe, and the wondrous and terrifying mystery that is time. The Need is a brain-bending heartbreaker of a novel, and definitive proof that Helen Phillips is one of the most spellbindingly original writers working today

Laura Van Den Berg, author of THE THIRD HOTEL

This is a book about the biggest things you can imagine--the dreadful potentiality of life, the fierceness of love, and the terrifying and exhilarating mystery of motherhood.  Helen Phillips writes at the nexus of science fiction and psychological realism, conjuring a narrative so mind-bending and immersive that it'll change what you see as real.  She is an author at the height of her power, and we are so lucky to be living in her moment

Alexandra Kleeman, author of YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE

The Need is a spellbinding novel, both unsettling and irresistible. The best fiction finds the uncanny within the familiar; it makes us feel the fantastical undercurrent of our embodied lives. With exquisite economy and evocative prose, Phillips manifests the surreal, terrifying, and visceral experience of motherhood

Dana Spiotta, author of INNOCENTS AND OTHERS

A superbly engaging read – quirky, perceptive, and gently provocative... Suspenseful and mysterious, insightful and tender, Phillips' new thriller cements her standing as a deservedly celebrated author with a singular sense of story and style

Motherhood as horror isn’t a new genre, but The Need sends it to a new place... The Need is a thriller, and it isn’t. It’s a novel Shirley Jackson might write if she’d dropped acid with Rivka Galchen

gripping, shape-shifting... an unforgettable reading experience

Phillips is a writer who is unafraid to confront the sublime; to demystify its capacity to inspire terror and ecstasy, both.

I'll also be calling in sick for The Need, by Helen Phillips, whose unexpected fiction reminds us that the membrane between reality and madness is porous indeed

What presents at first as a straightforward thriller is quickly revealed — in a series of short, sharp chapters — to be a sort of narrative nesting doll, a story infused with both essential home truths and a wild, almost unhinged sense of unreality....

The Need opens with the taut terror of a suspense novel, but its destination is not the twist reveal or the explosive showdown — it’s an exquisitely tender meditation on motherhood’s joys and comorbid torments

Compelling and original… Told in terse, claustrophobic chapters, this is a creepy, poignant tale that picks at the very edges of what we understand to be reality. Or not’

The Need is most compelling when most savage

The Need is an examination of the dark side of the best-case scenario, the necessary lamination of joy with fear, adoration with resentment and boredom, all the contradictions that attend the unfolding of an identity predicated on the loss of identity

The terror of the home invasion is perfectly vivid, and so is the disturbing prospect that we’re embedded in the consciousness of a woman who is dangerously split off from reality. Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of this year’s most necessary novels.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2019 
A New York Times 2019 Notable Book 
2019 BOOK OF THE YEAR: Oprah Magazine, Time, Vulture, and Entertainment Weekly 
 
'The Need is a profound meditation on the nature of reality, a fearless examination of parenthood, and also somehow a thriller. This is an extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers' Emily St. John Mandel 
 
She crouched in front of the mirror in the dark, clinging to them. The baby in her right arm, the child in her left. 
There were footsteps in the other room... 
 
Molly is exhausted, anxious, losing her grip on reality. Her husband is away and she is running between her children and her job, where things are unravelling. She’s a paleobotanist, working at a fossil quarry, and has recently unearthed artefacts that defy understanding; the coke bottle with the lettering that leans the wrong way, an alternate version of the Bible. Where do these things come from? 
 
At home, as dusk falls, she gets jumpy. Are those footsteps out in the hall? What was that noise? She holds her two small children close to her, and tries to pull herself together. But her worlds of work and home are about to collide. She discovers that the stranger in her sitting room knows everything about her life and, as their identity becomes chillingly clear, this intruder makes a demand of Molly that upends everything, forcing her to reckon with her most unspeakable fears. 
 
The Need is a gripping, unsettling and stunningly original story that probes deep truths about motherhood, and explores grief, loss and how we treat others. It's a compulsive, reality-warping novel that makes us rethink our world, and question how far we would go to protect the ones we love. 
 
 
'The atmosphere is as close and taut as a thriller, but this is, in fact, both a highly original examination of grief and an extraordinarily vivid evocation of motherhood -- the moments of terror and hilarity, the visceral burden of it, and the fleeting, but almost transcendent, joy' Daily Mail 
 
'A chilling novel from a blazing talent' Observer

Helen Phillips

Praise for The Need

A chilling novel from a blazing talent...in addition to being a cerebral meditation on motherhood at its most elemental – fierce, beatific, sanity-thieving – it’s an adroitly executed thriller with a quasi-sc ...

[A] frenzied fever dream of a novel. Read it as a sci-fi thriller, or understand it instead as metaphorical; either way, it’s a page-turner… magnificent... This is a smart, sharp book that cuts to the heart o ...

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… **Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...**

A chilling novel from a blazing talent...in addition to being a cerebral meditation on motherhood at its most elemental – fierce, beatific, sanity-thieving – it’s an adroitly executed thriller with a quasi-sc ...

[A] frenzied fever dream of a novel. Read it as a sci-fi thriller, or understand it instead as metaphorical; either way, it’s a page-turner… magnificent... This is a smart, sharp book that cuts to the heart o ...

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… **Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...**

A chilling novel from a blazing talent...in addition to being a cerebral meditation on motherhood at its most elemental – fierce, beatific, sanity-thieving – it’s an adroitly executed thriller with a quasi-sc ...

[A] frenzied fever dream of a novel. Read it as a sci-fi thriller, or understand it instead as metaphorical; either way, it’s a page-turner… magnificent... This is a smart, sharp book that cuts to the heart o ...

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… **Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...**

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Praise for The Need

A chilling novel from a blazing talent...in addition to being a cerebral meditation on motherhood at its most elemental – fierce, beatific, sanity-thieving – it’s an adroitly executed thriller with a quasi-sc ...

[A] frenzied fever dream of a novel. Read it as a sci-fi thriller, or understand it instead as metaphorical; either way, it’s a page-turner… magnificent... This is a smart, sharp book that cuts to the heart o ...

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...

A chilling novel from a blazing talent...in addition to being a cerebral meditation on motherhood at its most elemental – fierce, beatific, sanity-thieving – it’s an adroitly executed thriller with a quasi-sc ...

[A] frenzied fever dream of a novel. Read it as a sci-fi thriller, or understand it instead as metaphorical; either way, it’s a page-turner… magnificent... This is a smart, sharp book that cuts to the heart o ...

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...

A chilling novel from a blazing talent...in addition to being a cerebral meditation on motherhood at its most elemental – fierce, beatific, sanity-thieving – it’s an adroitly executed thriller with a quasi-sc ...

[A] frenzied fever dream of a novel. Read it as a sci-fi thriller, or understand it instead as metaphorical; either way, it’s a page-turner… magnificent... This is a smart, sharp book that cuts to the heart o ...

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… **Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...**

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… **Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...**

Phillips can conjure pure nightmare in a single sentence… **Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of thi ...**