Why am I passionate about this?
As a child, I listened to scary Korean folklore and then devoured all of Grimm’s fairy tales with their themes of good versus evil, disguise and betrayal, sacrifice, and magic. It’s not surprising that as I grew older, my reading tastes skewed toward darkness, mystery, madness, and the uncanny. There’s a penitential aspect to gothic stories, with their superstitious moralism, often with elements of the supernatural manifesting not as monsters but restless spirits—the repressed ghosts of a location’s history. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of a place absorbing and regurgitating the histories and sins of its occupants, whether it be a town, a house, or both.
Chin-Sun's book list on distressed women
Why did Chin-Sun love this book?
One of my favorite hair-raising tropes is the hostile doppelgänger, and this one really delivers! After sensing an intruder in the house, Molly, a young mother, encounters a menacing double who calls herself “Moll” and claims to be her from an alternate reality, one where she has no children—which prompts her to claim Molly’s.
What makes this book so tense and creepy is Molly’s unreliable POV as she wrestles with her anxiety, exhaustion, and protectiveness over her two young children. Is Moll the manifestation of a psychotic breakdown? Does Molly want to vanquish her or trade places? The prose is potent and spare, with short chapters alternating between past and present action, twisting the suspense all the way to its ambiguous—but for me, satisfying—conclusion.
1 author picked The Need as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
***LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION***
Named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time
“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…