This emotionally astute novel describes a woman’s descent into psychological distress, but some of its ideas remain embryonic

Nine months is not long enough to grow a physiologically robust human being. Newborns enter the world vulnerable in ways that might be avoided if the gestation period were longer. Scientists long held the belief that this foreshortening was due to an evolutionary trade-off between the brain size of the child and hip-width of the mother. More recently, research has suggested that the explanation lies in energy, not geometry. When the energy demands of a foetus reach roughly double those expended by a mother at rest, a threshold is passed and the upper limit of a pregnancy is reached. As a result, we humans meet our children ahead of time, their bodies assailable and exposed, ours exhausted and hypervigilant.

Raw Content, the latest novel by author and academic Naomi Booth, exists in the psychological and social hinterlands of new motherhood; heart ablaze, nerves frayed, a mind willing itself to do the impossible, namely, to make the world safe. The book centres on Grace, a legal editor who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. She denies the impending reality of her situation until the last moment, before hastily setting up house and playing families with her boyfriend and her newborn baby. At which point, the stage is set; Grace, alternately brittle and open-hearted, is thrust into a new unreality of alien bodies, uncomfortable proximities, needs, flesh, insatiable hungers.