Lucy Ives writes about Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors for the Los Angeles Review of Books:
It’s a study of a baby and of babies, of culture and of vulnerability. Most of all, it’s a study of everything one has missed perceiving previous to the arrival of a child.
Galchen’s book is an “extended essay vérité,” modeled in part on Sei Shonagon’s idiosyncratic 11th century musings, The Pillow Book, and in that regard can seem diaristic, both voluble and vulnerable.