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A review by amycrea
After Birth by Elisa Albert
2.0
I really wanted to love this book. It covers topics that deserve to be explored in literature: how difficult life with a newborn can be and the effects of untreated post-partum depression; difficult mother-daughter relationships; problematic female friendships.
But this book is only 194 pages long, and it feels as if the author jammed as much as she could on those themes into one blistering manifesto that ends up being off-putting. The narrator, Ari, is clearly severely depressed after the birth of her son resulted in a C-section. Her anger ends up all over the place--at the baby, her husband (of whom we see little and don't fully understand why they're married), at pretty much every other woman she meets and has met her entire life. It's exhausting and forced and has an abrupt ending that is unearned.
But this book is only 194 pages long, and it feels as if the author jammed as much as she could on those themes into one blistering manifesto that ends up being off-putting. The narrator, Ari, is clearly severely depressed after the birth of her son resulted in a C-section. Her anger ends up all over the place--at the baby, her husband (of whom we see little and don't fully understand why they're married), at pretty much every other woman she meets and has met her entire life. It's exhausting and forced and has an abrupt ending that is unearned.