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A Mouthful of Air

Name: A Mouthful of Air
Author: Amy Koppelman
ISBN: 9781931561303

by Amy Koppelman

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Overview

"We meet Julie Davis a few weeks after her suicide attempt and on the eve of her son's first birthday. Desperate to lead a "normal" life, Julie tries to be thankful for the good things - her comfortable lifestyle, her doting husband, and her healthy baby." But her emotional demons are unrelenting, and the battle is being quietly lost.

Synopsis

To the outside world Julie Davis has it all--wealth, a doting husband, an apartment on the Upper West Side, and an adorable new baby boy. But underneath the perfect exterior, she is paralyzed by an over-whelming sense of shame and inadequacy. A Mouthful of Air begins a few weeks after Julie's suicide attempt and on the eve of her son's first birthday. Desperate to lead a "normal" life, Julie tries to be thankful for the good things, but her emotional demons persist. In the midst of her struggle, she discovers that she is pregnant for a second time, and is forced to come off the medication that has given her the buoyancy to survive. Through sparse, elegant prose, Amy Koppelman's brutally honest portrayal of family and self shows the reader that real problems are indiscriminate of money or birthright. A Mouthful of Air brings to light the complexity and fragility of the human psyche. Amy Koppelman's gracious personality belies her bold nature as a writer. She took on a tough subject, perhaps one of the toughest, and produced a book that is as graceful as it is uncompromising. In a time when redemption is almost a required device in literature written by women, Amy has instead chosen reality because that is what is needed. Being a small part of her shattering debut makes me proud to be in publishing.--P.W. I guess I started writing this book a little after one o'clock in the afternoon on April 8, 1994. I didn't take pen to paper. But that's the day I started writing this story. I was twenty-four years old at the time. I had been married for a little over two years to my husband. We had a great apartment on the Upper West Side. There were even a few trees on our block, so it was nice forme; I got to see the seasons change. On this day, I had gotten up early, fixed my husband breakfast, waved him off to work. Then I tidied up the place, drew the shades, and crawled into bed. This was how I spent each day. "He's dead." "Who's dead?" "Kurt Cobain." I have to do this in three hundred words, so I can't go line for line, but you know how the conversation went. What about Rome? But Frances? Why? We hung up and I turned on MTV. Nothing like a visibly shaken Kurt Loder to make you really feel like shit. Anyway, soon after Cobain died, I read Anna Karenina and it struck me that despite being born in different centuries and on different continents, Anna and Kurt were very much alike. I know, you're probably rolling your eyes, that's quite a reach, honey. But this is part of the problem. Most of the time, even for me, it's easier tow write "depression" off, to think of it as just another word for sadness. But depression, not the "I'm so depressed, I hate mushrooms and they're everywhere in my salad" depression, but the illness that Kurt, Anna, and Julie, the protagonist of my novel, suffer from, is a whole different kind of thing. For them, no amount of love, no amount of passion, no amount of heart is enough to see them through. Today there are medicines that help. And there are countless worthwhile books that document that journey toward recovery. I think it's fair to tell you, though: this isn't one of them. Readers always ask me if the book is fiction, and yeah, this is fiction. I'm still married. I have two beautiful kids. And I don't spend my days hiding in a dark room. You should see me; I could give Rodin a run for his money with the Play-doh. But who I am today is a longway from who I was when I first started writing. So the feelings in my novel, the fear, the endless self-doubt, well, all that stuff is pretty close to the bone.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Lean, minutely detailed and frighteningly convincing, this polished debut explores the mind of Julie Davis, a privileged 26-year-old New Yorker suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth to her son, Teddy. The novel begins just after she tries to commit suicide, soon before Teddy's first birthday. Back from the hospital and home with her husband, Ethan, and Teddy's live-in nurse, Georgie, Julie struggles to feign normality, continually reassuring herself that she can function perfectly well: "She will empty the stroller and pay for what she has. She will tell Ethan to bring home bottled water or just use water from the tap." The plot moves along the grooves of her depressed, circular thinking, fed by small, ordinary developments: a Knicks game, a Tupperware party, a trip to the grocery store with Teddy, a move to the suburbs. Tranquil as her life is on the outside, her mind never rests, constantly struggling with the voice in her head that she describes as a "skeptical, mocking, bitter person furious she is alive." Memories of childhood with her father intrude often. He called her Flower, but treated her and her mother roughly, leaving many scars. Another frequently heard voice is that of her mother whose motto is "If you look happy and pretty, then you are happy and pretty." Ethan is patient and thoughtful, though he has odd lapses, calling his formerly bulimic wife "Tiny." Koppelman skillfully builds suspense as Julie battles with her demons, conjuring up an airless, oppressively stifling world. Though all signs point to the disturbing ending, it still comes as a surprise. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

First novel about a young woman’s struggle with postpartum depression. The problem with stories about depression is that, even with happy endings, they are almost invariably as enervating as the disease itself. Julie Davis, our heroine, is a bright and sensitive New Yorker, happily married to Ethan (a successful lawyer) and the mother of a baby boy. Although Julie genuinely loves her son and husband, she sank into a terrible melancholy after giving birth and tried to kill herself. She slowly began to put her life in some order afterward with the help of Ethan and Dr. Edelman, a psychiatrist who was able to prescribe antidepressants. Naturally, Julie wondered how much of her problem was rooted in her past, and she began to consider the effect that her parents’ unhappy marriage and divorce had on her (as well as on her druggy brother David, a college dropout who now lives in the East Village). Just as Julie seemed on the verge of full recovery, however, she learned that she was pregnant again. This is good news and bad: Julie and Ethan both want another child, but it means that Julie will have to go off her meds until delivery. Will she be able to manage? She also has to adjust to life outside the city, since Ethan has bought a house in Long Island in anticipation of their new arrival. Anyone who has suffered from depression will recognize the distant, almost ethereal rhythm of Julie’s days—the constant rumination on the past, the lack of emotional response to the world around her, the sudden and inexplicable panics—but those who have not may find her story flat and largely uneventful. A true and often moving portrait of someone in the grip of a terrible disease but, still, fartoo self-contained to succeed as a narrative. Agent: Amy Rennert & Randi Murray/Amy Rennert Agency