April 15, 2023
A poet and short story writer describes a pregnancy spent in Taos, New Mexico. Novak begins her debut memoir with a list of things she wants to forget: her dog, impending motherhood, "my husband snoring beside me," the changing shape of her body, and her "debt-pay-off plans," among others. Instead, she focuses on the purpose of her trip to Taos, which is to research the artist Agnes Martin, who had recently become something of an obsession. A recovering anorexic and bulimic with diagnosed depression and an undiagnosed anxiety disorder, Novak is prone to flights of frightening anger that lead to violent rages that she is unable to recall after they pass. Pregnancy wreaked havoc on her vulnerabilities, disfiguring the body she spent years trying to control and tipping her into suicidal ideation that, her physician cruelly reminded her, endangered both her and her baby. "How impossible it is to be fully here--present in the present--when you're pregnant," she writes. "Pregnant, the present zips you between future and past." In Taos, where she and her husband moved temporarily, Novak tried to survive her pregnancy by focusing on her research on Martin, an endeavor that morphed from a literary project into an attempt to transform into the abstract painter herself. "I was here to be like Agnes Martin, not relapse into the past," she writes. The more she sank into Martin's world, the more she descended into the complexity of her own bodily needs and desires as well as her deepest fears. Novak's rhythmic prose is stunningly creative, clearly drawing on her poetic background. Structurally, though, the first third of the book drags, mostly because the author doesn't explain the origin of her obsession with Martin or fully reveal her neurodiversity. Still, the majority of the story pulses with honesty and vulnerability, spiraling to a satisfying ending. A lyrical memoir about pregnancy, mental illness, and art.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
May 22, 2023
In this bittersweet memoir, poet and novelist Novak (Meaningful Work) silences inner turmoil during her pregnancy by adopting the hermetic lifestyle of abstract painter Agnes Martin (1912–2004). When familiar negative thought patterns surfaced during Novak’s first pregnancy, leading to depression and disordered eating, her doctor told her she was “being selfish” and insisted she go on antidepressants. Appalled, Novak instead sought relief by living for three weeks in the self-imposed isolation that Martin, a personal hero, worked in. The author set off to Taos, N.Mex., with a list of rules—including no phone and no email—and became obsessed with harnessing Martin’s joyful isolation for her own enlightenment: “Positive freedom, I hoped, would cure me of the negative feelings that held such power over my life.” Though her studies of Martin sometimes crossed the line into worrisome compulsion, Novak gradually reached a breakthrough, even discovering maternal instincts while analyzing some of Martin’s art. Many women will relate to Novak’s discomfort with her pregnant body and fears about the ways motherhood will change her as a person. Though Novak’s frank descriptions of her mental health crises make for difficult reading, this is a courageous and moving memoir of motherhood. Agent: Michael Hoffman, Regal Hoffman & Assoc.