A debut novel from a remarkable new talent: a visceral and revelatory portrait of a woman struggling with maternal fear and its looming madness, showing how difficult and fragile those postpartum days can be, and how vital love is to pull anyone out from the dark
There is the before and the after. Withering in the maternal prison of her apartment, a new mother finds herself spiraling into a state of complete disaffection. As a translator, she is usually happy to spend her days as the invisible interpreter. But now home alone with her newborn, she is ill at ease with this state of perpetual giving, carrying, feeding. The instinct to keep her baby safe conflicts with the intrusive thoughts of causing the baby harm, and she struggles to reclaim her identity just as it seems to dissolve from underneath her.
Feeling isolated from her supportive but ineffectual husband, she strikes up a tentative friendship with her ailing upstairs neighbor, Peter, who hushes the baby with his oxygen tank in tow. But they are both running out of time; something is soon to crack. Joyful early days of her pregnancy mingle with the anxious arrival of the baby, and culminate in a painful confrontation—mostly, between our narrator and herself. Striking and emotive, The Nursery documents the slow process of staggering back towards the simple pleasures of life and reentering the world after post-partum depression.
THE NURSERY
Szilvia Molnar
I don’t think everyone wants to read this book. Szilvia Molnar set out to hurt some people with this book of truth.
This might be my first true UNDER-THE-RADAR book pick and review because I don’t think a lot of people have heard of this book or this author. I had never heard of this author before either until I came across the book on NetGalley.
The first thing I noticed was the striking cover. It elicited emotions I didn’t know I had, and I requested it right away. I had no idea what it had in store for me or just how incredible the book was.
Let’s talk about the book.
This book is extraordinary. Told from the viewpoint of a translator, a story about a new mother suffering from postpartum depression soon after giving birth to her daughter, she calls “BUTTON.” As she spends her days and nights and everything in between caring for her young infant she draws further and further into her depression.
In perhaps a last-ditch effort to feel human she makes a companionable relationship with a grief-stricken widow, her upstairs neighbor. They forge a friendship of shared grief and self-pity, sometimes not knowing where the line is drawn between the two.
However dire, at least they understand each other in ways those who have not lost do not.
There are intelligent observations made with crystalline clarity and lines that land with subtle devastation period after period.
Like a trigger wire in a minefield, I didn’t know I was delicately navigating the text until I was. I was wholly invested in the sways of her moods, in the bleakness and undeniability of her honesty, and in the depravity of her mind and body.
I simultaneously devoured it all the while being eaten by it. There are a lot of good books coming out this year and this is one of my favorites so far. THE NURSERY comes out on March 21, 2023. Get yourself a copy!
Thanks to NetGalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Pantheon for the advanced copy!
THE NURSERY…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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