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'Parallel Play' by Thomas Rayfiel

This look at postpartum in the big city rings true to most women's fears of motherhood

By Liz Schroeter
Published: April 3rd, 2007 | 9:07am

Random House, $13.95, List Price: 272 pages

While motherhood is something that many of us imagine we will someday do, it's also, well, scary. For me, it's near to impossible to imagine myself with a baby strapped to my body as I go through day-to-day life in Brooklyn. Part of that fear is being young (though hardly too young to start popping out babies), and part of it is big city culture.

It's hard to fathom settling down into motherhood when around the corner someone is filming a major motion picture, when there's a big loft party to hit in downtown Brooklyn, or when your flirty ex-lover is turning up and luring you into day trips to Coney Island. It's these kinds of very NYC distractions that add to Rayfiel's heroine Eve's struggle to feel equipped for motherhood. She wonders just how other mothers seem so together when she feels utterly lost, fighting to love and relate to her seven-month-old baby Ann, who she regards more as a burden than a daughter.

For all her sarcastic commentary, it's hard to tell at first if Eve's resentment is to be read as comedically cynical or as a darker state of mind--postpartum depression. Her bitter impressions of other Park Slope super moms are funny, but don&'t always jive with just how disturbed Eve's character is supposed to be feeling. The mood feels forced at times, but eventually as the reader gets more involved in Eve's struggling relationship with doctor husband Harvey, it's less distracting and the pages turn quickly through dramas with less-than-perfect mommy neighbors, visits with the dreamy but damaged ex, and Eve's slow reawakening to her past self as well as the slow bonding with her daughter.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Parallel Play is how easily one forgets that the voice of this young mother and wife was actually penned by a male author. Rayfiel touches on some very real feminine fears and insecurities. In fact, Parallel Play is the third in a series of books staring Eve which includes Colony Girl (1999) and Eve in the City (2003), and Parallel Play does a good job of referring back to those tales without depending on them to tell this latest story of Eve's life.

As a whole, Parallel Play's appeal lies in its bold decision to depict motherhood as something that can be scary, something that doesn't come naturally to everyone (at least not right away) and something that doesn't simply turn off one's connection to their past desires. Eve's persona may seem a little contrived, but her timid steps into motherhood (sometimes hilarious, sometimes unnerving) read as very real indeed.