The Pumpkin Eater

Our unnamed narrator is the mother of countless children, also nameless, from several marriages, and the wife of the successful screenwriter Jake Armitage. The Armitages are building a glass tower in the countryside where they first met, where their large family may or may not be able to live happily ever after. The Pumpkin Eater begins in a psychiatrist's office, and from that moment, the narrator seems to dare us to diagnose her, and perhaps society as well, raising questions about men and women, sex and reproduction, but refusing to answer them. She testifies to a life full not only of children-though the children are only occasionally seen or heard, their presence, intruding on a grim adult world of movie stars and doctors, adultery and depression, is palpable-but also of bodies, grocery lists, nursery rhymes, messes, aging parents, memories, dreams, and breakdowns. Yet her voice is smart, raw, wry, and deeply sympathetic, and the prose is surprisingly spare and elegant in this exquisitely surreal black comedy.

Penelope Mortimer (1918-1999) was a biographer, novelist, and journalist, whose work regularly appeared in The New Yorker. Her many books include Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, Queen Mother, and The Handyman. Her autobiography, About Time, won the Whitbread Prize. The Pumpkin Eater was made into a film starring Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch and with a Harold Pinter screenplay.

Daphne Merkin is a critic, novelist, and regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review. She is currently at work on a cultural and personal memoir of depression, Melancholy Baby.