In 1932, a sideshow magician known only as Mr. Electrico disappeared into the American heartland.
The only evidence of the performer’s existence was a memory shared by the acclaimed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, who credited a strange, seemingly mystical encounter with Mr. Electrico with changing his life.
If you are lucky enough to have come of age in a time when seeking treatment for anxiety is akin to, say, visiting a dermatologist for acne, you might have some trouble getting your bearings in “Commitment,” Mona Simpson’s generously proportioned, gently powerful seventh novel.
But if you grew up among people who whispered certain words — remember Mare Winningham’s mother in “St. Elmo’s Fire,” lowering her voice to say “cancer”? — then this story of three siblings fending for themselves in the 1970s after their mother enters a psychiatric hospital will demonstrate how far we’ve come in our conversations about mental health. (Though still not far enough.)
“The Nursery” concerns itself with something every new mother goes through: the discovery that she’s gone from being a (relatively) free entity roaming the earth to a bleeding, exhausted body that exists mostly to nurture her baby. Molnar pushes this transformation into the stuff of quiet horror. In doing so, she’s written an essential and surprisingly thrilling book about motherhood.
In his new book, “The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science,” Alan Lightman describes watching the lives of a family of ospreys one summer near his house on a small island in Maine. From his second-floor deck, he observed the chicks in the nest beginning to flap their wings, growing bigger and stronger. “All summer long, they had watched me on that deck as I watched them,” Lightman writes. Then, one afternoon, they took their maiden flight. “They did a wide half-mile loop out over the ocean and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed.” Lightman was concerned; a juvenile osprey, though smaller than an adult, still has powerful, sharp talons. “My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since the birds could have ripped my face off,” he recalls. “But something held me to my ground.” At the last moment, when the birds were within 15 or 20 feet of him, they veered away and soared upward. “But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact.” After the young ospreys disappeared, Lightman was shaking and in tears. “To this day,” he observes, “I don’t understand what happened in that half second. But it was a profound connection to nature. And a feeling of being part of something much larger than myself.”