Lilith Spring 2003 | By: Patricia Grossman There are two sets of fresh scars in Amy Koppelman's audacious debut novel, A Mouthful of Air. Out of pure coincidence, Julie Davis has slit her wrists around the same time as her mother, Harriet, has a face lift. Both women are privileged, but one is a survivor, the other a perpetual self-doubter.

Julie is a young woman who seems to have sleepwalked into the life prescribed for her. Blessed with the physical attractiveness that can shield select women from harm, from too much exposure to the struggles of those who make their own way, she has effortlessly acquired a successful husband, an unfailingly decent, if conventional man, a little boy, a baby girl. Both husband and wife bought what theyíve presumably been sold throughout their lives, all the trimmings of their social class. Yet, Julie is absent from her own life. Most of her time is spent living as an imposter. Day by day, hour by hour she remains a witness to her own search for authentic emotion.

The novel opens a few weeks after Julie has slit her writs, discovered in the bathtub by her housekeeper, her daughter Rachel yet to be born. We come to know Julie during the mending process from this suicide attempt.

Koppelman tells Julieís story in a spare, staccato prose, a rhythm that seems to keep pace with her heroine's methodical efforts to achieve wholeness. Koppelman gestures to possible causes for Julieís profound depression, but she understands the etiology of this illness does not reside in circumstance. She tells an ultimately harrowing story, but guides it with restraint and honesty, and no small amount of courage.

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