A Mouthful of Air

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Now a major motion picture starring Amanda Seyfried. A Mouthful of Air is a compassionate and wrenching portrait of a mother torn between a superabundance of love for her family and the depression and doubt that frequently weighs her down. Julie Davis seemingly has it all -- an attentive husband, a healthy son about to celebrate his first birthday, a posh apartment with live-in help in a desirable building on Manhattan's Upper West Side -- but crushing postpartum depression transforms even small talk and mundane questions into exchanges fraught with imagined consequence. Over the course of three winter days in late-1997, Julie attempts to present a steady face of ordinariness and joy, boiling peaches for her son's first birthday, attending a basketball game with her husband, and visiting her mother. When an annual doctor's check-up reveals a startling discovery, Julie is forced to make difficult decisions that will threaten the precarious balance she's fought so hard to achieve. With propulsive, poetic prose, Amy Koppelman delivers a frank and elegiac portrayal of Julie's internalized struggle in this heartbreakingly powerful statement on motherhood, family, and survival.