I think the NYRB Classics edition of Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater has one of the greatest covers. It’s a painting by Susan Bower called Downhill in a Pram, and it fits both the tone and the contents of this book perfectly.

Published in 1962, this is a novel of existential crisis — in particular the existential crisis of a young, upper-middle class wife and mother — and from the great introduction by Daphne Merkin it sounds like it cut close to Mortimer’s own life. It’s a novel about a women who has had more marriages and children than society thinks appropriate, and when the novel starts she’s about to begin another marriage, her mostly anonymous children a topic his parents bring up in a soft attempt to dissuade the fiancé. That marriage also isn’t going to go as we might dream.

The book begins with an interesting opening that, aside from the intriguing setting, lets readers immediately start to question what the main character, Mrs. Armitage, is going to relate to us.

“Well,” I said, “I will try. I honestly will try to be honest with you, although I suppose really what you’re more interested in is in my not being honest, if you see what I mean.”

The doctor smiled slightly.

Why is she with a doctor? What kind of doctor? Why is this doctor interested in her story? Why is this doctor, potentially, more interested in Mrs. Armitage’s dishonesty?

For me, it set up a situation where our narrator’s situation was essentially unknowable, even, importantly, to her. And yet everyone is trying to explain her seemingly aberrant behavior. Why does she want more children? Is it about her own childhood trauma? Is it about her enjoyment — or lack thereof — of sex?

And the book is not just a straightforward narrative, either. As the cover on this edition indicates, the mind experiencing the events might just experience them differently than we on the outside observe.

I’ve had this book on my shelf since it came out from NYRB Classics in 2011. I’m so glad I finally read it!