Afterbirth

A darkly loving tribute to and viscerally affecting example of the “mommy horror” genre, Cleary’s intimate and unsettling debut tackles bloody themes of bodies gone rogue, obsessive care, and desires that will be fulfilled at any cost. Brooke Noone, still hurting from a breakup with the horror movie–loving girlfriend she met during her time in Japan, travels to Vancouver to support her sister, Izzy, through the removal of an abdominal growth that ends in a surprise hysterectomy. As the sisters navigate their complicated relationship, and Brooke discovers how deep Izzy’s grief around not being able to have children goes, she perceives a sinister air in Izzy’s apartment building, and is especially disturbed by the creepy old woman skulking around the halls whom residents have nicknamed Medusa. Cleary does a beautiful job blurring the narrative lines between Brooke’s memories, dark dreams, and surreal experiences in the present, pulling the reader into her increasingly unmoored perceptions and her feelings of losing control. Repeated elements, such as a dark nursery song Brooke first heard in Japan being sung by the neighbor’s daughter, weave through the story and form a scaffolding for the reader to move through the character’s internal world. The result is a gory, feminist, and stirring take on the gendered terror of pregnancy as parasite. (Mar.)