Publishers Weekly
01/16/2023
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. Agent: Kate Johnson, Wolf Literary. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
"Brilliant . . . an essential and surprisingly thrilling book about motherhood . . . . Molnar’s book, with its nameless protagonist and oppressive non-eventfulness and cool prose, suggests the work of a number of contemporaries — Ottessa Moshfegh, Sheila Heti — but in the end it’s Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story, 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' that’s the most apt shelfmate. We are watching a consciousness unravel.”
—New York Times
"Molnar has written a daring and much-needed novel that has some of the hothouse, unflinching quality of Sylvia Plath’s late poetry...A powerful brew of a novel, emitting unpleasant sights, smells, and emotions that are rarely captured in print; it is frequently disquieting in its brutal, insistent candor."
—Atlantic
"Molnar's debut, about the first few sleep-decimated weeks in the life of a new mother...brings this particularly mind-eviscerating state of affairs into startlingly sharp relief in this uncompromising novel. And yet this is also an oddly affirmative novel, alive with a dangerous self-aware humor."
—Daily Mail
"Molnar’s wellspring is universal; her features are particularly of our moment; and her flourishes of darkness let in the sublime...The Nursery deserves to be widely read."
—Compact Magazine
"Told with radical honesty and emotional precision, The Nursery is an essential addition to the growing canon of literary works reckoning with the complexities of motherhood."
—The Millions
"The Nursery dares to question the inviolable dictates of a mother’s love when a human is reduced to her suffering"
—BOMB Magazine (Editor's Choice)
"An important, unromanticized look at the instant, drastic changes new motherhood can bring"
—Library Journal
"Molnar’s entrancing debut captures the volatile inner life of a woman with postpartum depression...a powerful look at what a new mother endures."
—Publishers Weekly
"A searing portrait of postpartum motherhood written with visceral prose...powerful and haunting."
—Debutiful ("Best Books of 2023 so far")
“A radical novel...Szilvia Molnar’s astounding debut demonstrates that the intricate workings of the female mind deserve our most reverent attention. I’m obsessed with this book.”
—Jessamine Chan, New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good Mothers
"An essential, singular contribution to the literature of mothering as a human, embodied, fundamentally existential experience."
—Merritt Tierce, author of Love me Back
"The Nursery dares to put a woman's body at the center of the story, a book as frightening as it is profound, as gory as it's beautiful, a reeling vision of postpartum experience unlike any."
—Louisa Hall, author of Speak and Trinity
"With unsparing, hypnotic, and fearless prose, Szilvia Molnar captures the texture, rhythms, and agonies of the post-partum body and mind. The Nursery is a work of devastating elegance."
—Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
“A concise, powerful novel on bringing art and life into the world, by a beautiful prose stylist. Molnar's precision and phenomenal ear for language gives us new words for the oldest experience.”
—Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
“Szilvia Molnar's portrait of the postpartum world is ruthlessly true and exacting. It was electrifying to experience the days of early motherhood through Molnar's razor sharp realism and wit.”
—Rita Bullwinkel, author of Belly Up: Stories
“Szilvia Molnar's debut is a fierce psychological novel...The Nursery is powered by the shape of Molnar's imagination but also the brutal truth of personal experience.”
—Jessica Anthony, author of Enter the Aardvark
Library Journal
02/01/2023
DEBUT The unnamed narrator in literary agent Molnar's debut novel is an in-demand translator happily married to the supportive, loving John and eagerly awaiting the birth of their daughter, affectionately called Button. Then the narrator switches from blissful anticipation of Button's birth to shock at childbirth's assault on every intimate part of her body and mind, which plunges her into a dangerous downward spiral of exhaustion, pain, and depression. John, who is ineffective in addressing the severity of his wife's distress, returns to work, and their upstairs neighbor, a frail older man named Peter, steps in to help. As the narrative alternates between events before and after Button's birth, the narrator's unwanted thoughts of harming Button increase, and John's inability to take decisive action imperils this little family. VERDICT Molnar offers a harrowing cautionary tale about postpartum depression and the terror it can cause as it strips away any sense of control over mind and body. Some descriptions are so raw and graphic that one almost wants to read them with eyes half-closed. An important, unromanticized look at the instant, drastic changes new motherhood can bring, though a caveat: it does not address the relief that early medical intervention can provide.—Beth E. Andersen
Kirkus Reviews
2023-01-12
An overwhelmed new mother vents.
The mood in this debut novel is claustrophobic, and no wonder, since the unnamed narrator refuses to leave her apartment, much to the chagrin of her supportive but increasingly concerned and frustrated husband, John. She won’t even go to the first two checkups for their daughter, Button—well, that’s not her real name, the woman informs us: “The baby I hold in my arms is a leech, let’s call her Button.” Molnar grittily conjures the exhaustion and disorientation of the first weeks with a first child in a narration that voices furious resentment of Button’s insatiable demands and some scary thoughts about harming her. John’s cheerful acceptance of their new routine is easy for him, she bitterly muses; he gets to go to the office and sleep through the night while she gets up to nurse yet again. Miffo (the narrator’s name for her floundering postpartum self) lost her own mother as a girl and painfully feels the lack of a maternal role model; John and well-meaning friends try to help, but she pushes them all away, becalmed in severe depression. Only an elderly upstairs neighbor, who initially knocks on her door to complain about the baby crying, becomes an odd sort of confidant, and then dies. Wistful memories of time with John “before” and of her work as a translator, when “I could choose between this word or that [and] linger in silence,” will strike a chord with anyone who remembers the difficult adjustment to life ruled by someone else’s needs, but Miffo seems never to experience the moments of joy that, for most new parents, at least occasionally alleviate the equally powerful exhaustion, anger, and sorrow. She strikes one dreary note throughout, and by the time she finally emerges from her depression and steps outdoors, readers may well be very tired of her.
Commendably honest but not compelling fiction.
