Now You Know It All

August 30, 2021
Pearson’s subtle and moving collection (after Every Human Love) showcases women pushed to their limits, with undertones of creepiness or dread. Two adult sisters reminisce in “Boy in the Barn” about their summers spent with their grandmother and are struck with the memory of tying up a boy. In “The Whaler’s Wife,” a college student volunteers for summer tutoring in Cambridge, Mass., and lives with a wealthy family hiding an unspoken tragedy. In “The Lily, the Rose, the Rose,” Cora frets that her second pregnancy at age 40 might land her back in the hospital with postpartum depression; meanwhile her young son becomes friendly with a stranger. The eponymous protagonist of “Darling” (described as “incongruous,” like “a switchblade on a heap of pillows”) reels from the news that the billionaire who groomed and trafficked her has died in prison. Beth Ann, the child therapist narrator of “The Films of Roman Polanski,” becomes enthralled by a manipulative 13-year-old foster child she is treating. Naive eighth-grader Margaret is taken under the wing of her Latin teacher in “Amo, Amas, Amat” and is bewildered by the teacher’s wife, who treats dolls as real babies. Throughout, Pearson’s stories glide through their alarming moments with a precision hard to look away from. This will transfix and unsettle.