The Nursery
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
'I'm obsessed with this novel.' Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2023
AN UNFORGETTABLE NOVEL ABOUT MATERNAL FEAR AND THE MYTH OF IDYLLIC EARLY MOTHERHOOD
The baby I hold in my arms is a leech, let’s call her Button. Button is crying.
There is a before, and there is an after.
In her cramped New York apartment, a mother wilts beneath the intense August heat, struggling to adapt to her role as the silent interpreter of her newborn baby’s needs. She is not the first woman to give birth, to hold and carry and soothe and cradle. But the walls of her home seem to press ever closer as she balances on the fragile tightrope between maternal instinct and the longing for all she has left behind.
A lifeline emerges in the unexpected form of Peter, her ailing upstairs neighbour, who hushes the baby with his oxygen tank in tow. They are both confined to this oppressive apartment building, and they are both running out of time. Something is soon to crack.
In this mesmerizing portrait of the first days of motherhood, Szilvia Molnar lays bare the strength it takes to redefine who you are, rediscovering the simple pleasures of life along the way.
'I was blown away by this book... At once somber and joyful, sly and earnest, nimble and painstaking, perverse and profoundly invigorating.' Lydia Kiesling, award-winning author of The Golden State
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Molnar's entrancing debut captures the volatile inner life of a woman with postpartum depression. The narrator, a literary translator, feels isolated while caring for her baby girl, Button, and, as her days blur into each other, she has a hard time seeing herself as more than a "milk bar," and her mind frequently reverts to thoughts of hurting Button. Molnar braids the narrator's gloomy reflections on motherhood ("Women have done this before me and nothing changed. And women will do this after me") with accounts of visits from an elderly neighbor who is mourning the death of his wife, and interactions with her husband, John. In one of the most powerful passages, the narrator studies John and finds him completely unchanged while her body has been torn apart, her career put on hold, and her time fully dedicated to raising her daughter. Though it's unclear how some of the pieces are meant to fit, such as the visits from the neighbor, Molnar brings a cutting verisimilitude to her portrayal of the narrator's fuzzy state of mind, and she's equally unsparing with her vivid descriptions of childbirth, recovery, and the physical demands of early motherhood. It amounts to a powerful look at what a new mother endures.
