We Were the Universe

Parsons’s story collection Black Light was longlisted for the National Book Award, so there are high expectations for her first novel, a story about sex, psychedelics, parenting, and grief, told through a long look into the mind of the narrator. Kitty, a young mother living in a Texas suburb, is still trying to come to terms with the death of her sister a few years earlier. Kitty’s mother has always had hoarder tendencies, but those tendencies have risen to the extreme since losing her daughter. Meanwhile, Kitty’s own daughter is a precocious four-year-old who is nevertheless still breastfeeding and sleeping in the family bed, and Kitty’s husband is a good guy who is just worried about his wife. All of this is told from Kitty’s point of view in a meandering, unfiltered way, but because of that, readers don’t get to know any of the other characters. It is a bit of a slog to get through, with occasional insights and humor amid the pathos.