Little Labors

If you need an antidote to the visceral immersion of Eleven Hours, here it is. Galchen holds children, and her own baby—whom she refers to, without explanation, as "the puma"—at arm's length, and you get the feeling that these notes were written out of a desperation to remain observant and analytical during the brain-fogging, all-consuming months of early parenthood. (One hint about her tone: the puma's middle name is "Spark," after the fabulously astringent novelist Muriel Spark.) I love Muriel Spark, and I love these little fragments and essays, whose deadpan restraint I find as moving as any gushy drama.