AFTER BIRTH: A New Narrative of Parenthood

After Birth by Elisa Albert
Reviewed by Katie Presley

My favorite book of the year arrived in the form of Elisa Albert’s vital new novel After Birth. Vital here means two things: One, it’s crucial: A grimly hilarious, wrenching narrative about pregnancy, birth, and child-rearing that will feel to new parents as necessary and welcome as a full night’s sleep. And two, it’s alive. Every page of After Birth vibrates with energy and intelligence. Protagonist Ari is the profane, generous, poetic, desperate, loving, terrified best friend we all hope for, whether we have a new baby and need help nursing or not. Sleep-deprived and thrumming with the electricity of new motherhood, she stumbles upon pockets of community and support in places expected and unexpected that cut through her small-town isolation and the clutch of post-partum depression.

The novel takes the form of Ari’s inner monologue, relaying real-time experiences of new motherhood and reminiscing about who she was before pregnancy, and how who she is fits into who the tiny person she created is. It’s a move that feels both bold and startlingly obvious on Albert’s part, writing a character that didn’t have a positive birth experience, and is struggling with depression and loneliness after the birth of her son. And that balance, the tension of subverting a hegemonic narrative by telling one that’s actually not uncommon, is what makes this novel so important. Yes, some new parents have done drugs in the past, and partied, and pursued doctorates in women’s studies, and wonder how giving birth affects and is affected by their radical politics. Some new parents feel desperately alone, even while reveling in the constant presence of their tiny new companions. Some were the lead singers in famous third-wave feminist anarchist punk bands, as was the woman Ari befriends down the street in their isolated upstate New York college town. Every moment is captured precisely by Albert; the unrelenting upstate winter, the stuffiness of university faculty parties, the unique cast of characters at the co-op where Ari works, and how Ari’s new lifestyle changes each of these.

Albert has clearly constructed this novel to counter-program the dominant narrative of new parenthood in every way, which is a refreshing move whether or not readers have children, and if they do, whether or not their experience mirrors Ari’s. Elisa Albert wields her fierce intelligence and stinging humor like a blade in relaying Ari’s thoughts, and does a masterful job of of conveying the gorgeous struggle of birth and all that comes after.

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Copies of After Birth are available on our shelves and via bookpeople.com.