“The Nursery” unfolds inside the head of an unnamed woman battling postpartum depression and isolation. Jessamine Chan, who wrote “The School for Good Mothers,” called it a “radical novel.” Radical, I think is absolutely the right word — it’s radical in its honesty.

The book flips and back forth between the woman’s pregnancy and postpartum depression, and the voice gripped me from the very start. Sometimes it felt like being in someone else’s fever dream.

“The Nursery” is so important because it shines a light on a mental health condition that’s rarely discussed in the open — especially when women’s health care in the U.S. is in crisis.

This is an incredibly difficult book to review and rate because, given the subject matter, it was an incredibly difficult book to read. Ultimately, my rating comes from how well this book captures the postpartum period and depicts postpartum anxiety/depression.

I have four children and never have I read anything that so viscerally and completely depicts postpartum life. The emotions, the physicalities, the mood swings, the anxiety - this book just nails it all. It’s a very difficult book to read because we want to believe that we’ll be in a state of bliss after having a baby. This book shatters that notion, which is so very necessary because that notion is absurd. While there are moments of bliss, of course, those early postpartum days and weeks are a time of change and evolution and struggle. They’re a time when you become a new person while providing care to a new living being.

I love that this book exists. I’ve never read anything like it and I’m so glad that this experience of childbirth and postpartum motherhood has been memorialized.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

*NetGalley provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Really impressed with Molnar's style, It made the emotions jump off the page and straight into me. I felt every anxious breath and sigh of relief of this new mother. I even found myself really pained to hear about her experience with postpartum and in general navigating the world as a "new" entity. I think mothers get the short end of the stick in so many ways, but I've never felt like I truly understood the complexity until now.

A must-read for current or expecting mothers, feminists, and those passionate about women's mental health, sexual health, and bodily autonomy.

Szilvia Molnar is memorable and very talented.

This was a good perspective into the mind of a postpartum mother. Our narrator is suffering from postpartum depression, but what mother hasn't felt some of these emotions. The loneliness, being scared to care for a newborn, the overwhelming feelings of nursing and caring for a newborn. I really enjoyed that she is a book translator and her use of other languages for some words.

Raw and heartfelt. Postpartum depression is told - as real as it went.

In a non-linear timeline, the story was told from pregnancy throughout the first weeks of being home with the newborn. The struggle coping with lack of sleep, nursing, changes in her own body, hallucinations, and the possibility of hurting and even killing her baby are all reminders of what many new moms went through after delivery.

Though it could be kind of repetitive and some point, but it still deeply felt.

This ouched. This perfectly captured the haze I experienced after becoming a parent, the anxiety, intrusive thoughts, the hopelessness, the need to stay connected to baby, the fear that you are not enough, the distrust in others. Post partum mental health issues are so real - and this book packs a punch.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon Books for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Nursery is an intimate, honest, and realistic look at PPD. It instantly transported me back to the blur of days after my child was born trying to figure out who and what I now was. This is a short novel, but it packs an emotional punch.

Publishes March 21, 2023

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this ahead of publication.
Szilvia Molnar gives a vivid and realistic portrayal of post partum depression. The writing is captivating and easily puts you in the head space of our unnamed narrator and recent mother who goes through the motions of daily life in a trance.
I’m not a mother myself so I can’t speak from personal experience but the descriptions of the mother mental space were extremely real and visceral.
I also really enjoyed the parts where our narrator was talking about her work as a translator and the way she talked about language.
An difficult but important read as well as an excellent debut. Szilvia Molnar is definitely an author to keep an eye on.

My son is nearly two years old and let me tell you, The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar took me right back to those early days when he was attached to me more than he wasn't, I didn't know what time it was, and sleep came in minutes, not hours. There were parts of postpartum life that I think I blocked from memory and The Nursery, for better or worse, brings it all back.

The Nursery is a hard read. It's a very intimate look at a woman in the throes of postpartum life. Call it PPD, call it PPA, call it what you will. I will be shocked to meet a woman who has had a newborn and doesn't relate to this novel at least in part.

There is so much symbolism in this book to be explored. Most glaring is the fact that the mother is simply an unnamed woman, the baby is referred to as Button, but the men in the novel both have names.

Overall, I needed a little more from this novel. It's short, which is good because the subject matter is often dark, but I could've used another fifty pages or so.

One aspect that really could've used a more real estate for me was the mother's feelings toward her husband and the impact on their relationship that the new baby had. I feel that this is overwhelmingly ignored in literature and can leave new moms feeling disoriented and isolated. There are glimpses of how the couple's relationship had changed but not enough, and often what was glimpsed felt slightly inauthentic. For example, though there were passing references of resentment and a lack of interest in intimacy, in the next breath, the woman would comment on how much she adored her husband.

The woman's relationship with Peter gave me some Man Called Ove vibes and I was there for it.

The moss stuff was super bizarre and that's all I'll say about that.

Overall, there is so much to unpack in this short novel. It's emotional, it's infuriating, it's heartbreaking, and ultimately it's very relatable. That being said, it's relatable for a very specific subset of people and for that reason, this is one I'll recommend selectively.

Thank you to Pantheon and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

With the dream-like timelessness of Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour, the observant introspection of Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies, and the stagnating New York of Jenny Offill’s Weather, The Nursery feels both comfortingly familiar and unlike anything I've read. The nameless narrator of Molnar’s novel is a Swedish-English translator who has just given birth to her first child, referred to as Button throughout. Rather than presenting an idealized portrait of motherhood, Molnar speaks about the bloody, painful, stinging, sleepless, terrifying aspects of new motherhood: her inability to differentiate the passage of days, intrusive, violent thoughts that worry her, mourning the freedom she had before Button’s birth, reliving her traumatic first days in hospital, and feeling resentment towards her husband, who seems largely unaffected by all of this. She writes: “Women have done this before me and nothing changed. And women will do this after me. Perhaps nothing will change. This concept can’t be literature,” but the beauty of this novel is that it changes the “can’t” of the last sentence into “hasn’t been”; this concept “hasn’t been” literature, even if it deserves to be. Through beautiful prose, stark honesty, and raw emotion, Molnar gives space to the unseen emotional and physical labour of new motherhood, granting herself compassion for what she isn’t able to do, and giving recognition for what she has to.

• This book was raw and haunting; it really peeled back the layers of the unnamed narrator’s postpartum experience in ways I’ve rarely encountered in literary representation.
• It was also very visceral and extremely hard to read at times (especially if you are or have been through the postpartum period—please consider this before picking it up) while also exquisitely beautiful and detailed in narrating this woman’s experience.
• While each woman’s postpartum depression is individual, this book does a good job of destigmatizing the experience, particularly many of the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies that lie at the heart of it—the fierce desire to protect one’s newborn while simultaneously feeling the overbearing weight of overwhelm.
• I loved the writing here—it was very poetic and lyrical, reminding me in some ways of The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka in this regard.

one of the most striking covers of 2023 for sure.

‘the nursery’ follows a young woman through the first week or so after her daughter’s birth and her struggle with postpartum depression. isolation, exhaustion and violent intrusive thoughts make the unnamed narrator wonder what motherhood actually is supposed to be. it’s so raw in its descriptions of her every thought, no matter how uncomfortable they may be, and paints such a vivid picture of how tough motherhood can be — a topic that’s still quite taboo to talk about.

a relatively short novel that packs such a punch. it’s written in vignettes that jump all around the place, making for a hazy atmosphere where all the days blend together. her job as a translator of swedish novels was a favorite part as well, seeing her yearn for that joy of the solitary work at her desk and having that identity be lost to becoming a mother. beautiful writing, highly recommend. i’ll be keeping my eye out for whatever this author comes out with next!

The narrator of The Nursery is an unnamed woman who has recently given birth to a baby and is suffering post partum depression. Her thoughts bounce around from the time before the birth to the time after the birth, to ways of harming the baby, to her upstairs neighbour who must take an oxygen tank everywhere with him and we also learn about the types of internet searches she's doing. It's a very short book, well written and containing pretty important information on what an effect childbirth can have on a person. I like another reviewer's description of the story as being told in a detached, dreamlike style. I had a difficult time rating this because there were some parts that really annoyed me, like the number of times the word "suck" was used (referring to the baby nursing of course but it's a word that grates on me) and the number of times her breasts were referred to as "tits", another word that irritates me. But the book was definitely readable and I was captivated by the writing. So 3.5 rounded up!

TW: Post partum depression, descriptions of postnatal difficulties.

My thanks to Pantheon via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.
Publication Date: March 21, 2023

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…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Despite not being a mother, I'm a woman in my thirties, and this book knocked me off my feet. I would look at trigger warnings before diving in, but I think every single woman in the world will find something in here that makes them say "yes, me too".

Raw and powerful, The Nursery manages to put into words the haze that new mothers sometimes float through and sometimes drown in during the first few weeks after giving birth. The narrator, though unnamed, was relatable on a visceral level, and her voice transported me back to bringing my own child home to a scary degree. I like that I as a reader was never quite sure if the neighbor existed or was a creation of an exhausted mind, and the length suits the plot just fine. Fantastic debut work from Szilvia Molnar, and I am looking forward to what comes next.

Note: I received a free ebook copy of The Nursery in exchange for an honest review.

the nursery is a short but powerful novel that follows a first-time mother along her first week postpartum. these first fragile days with her newborn are hazy and disorienting. we watch as her days blend together, her body tries to heal, and as she reckons with the realization that her life from this point on will never be the same. what stuck with me most is the growing resentment of her husband and unfairness that he seems so largely unaffected by all of this.

its well written with short chapters that mimic the speed at which a new mother’s attention span pings from one thing to another. i love the title; very little of the book takes place in an actual nursery because the narrator IS the nursery and she’s open 24/7 like it or not.

This is a raw depiction of a young woman’s early days as a mother. Alone in her apartment, after her husbands goes back to work, she is fearful, isolated, sleep deprived and is steeped in postpartum depression. Told in short sequences, the story comes across choppy at times and is almost dreamlike in quality. It’s hard to differentiate the real from the imagined as there is no real separation. I would venture to guess that most new mothers can relate to at least one or more of the feelings depicted in this book, but overall I found it sad that no one was getting her the help she so desperately needed. Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar

Published: March 21, 2023
Pantheon
Genre: Women’s Literary Fiction
Pages: 208
KKECReads Rating: 4/5
I received a copy of this book for free, and I leave my review voluntarily.

Szilvia Molnar is the foreign rights director at a New York-based literary agency, and author of a chapbook called Soft Split. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Lit Hub, Triangle House Review, Two Serious Ladies, The Buenos Aires Review, and Neue Rundschau. Szilvia is from Budapest and was raised in Sweden. She lives in Austin, Texas.

“I want you as much as I fear you.”

New parents struggle to find the balance of expanding to a family of three. Being a mother is hard, and it’s a challenge from the start. Late nights, household chores, and a screaming infant don’t help. Feeling lost in this new role and feeling inadequate makes things more difficult.

This was a different book. I think this novel is geared toward people who have had children, so I believe I miss several strong points.

But the writing does make you feel the chaotic, nervous energy of exhaustion and feeling lost. It makes you look at giving birth in a new way.

With vivid descriptions, fantasies, and a never-ending hunger, this book drags you in and forces you to witness the miracle of child-rearing.

Postpartum depression is rarely depicted this honestly. This short novel, in a non-linear timeline, follows a woman from pregnancy thru the first weeks of being home with her newborn. Her struggle to cope with lack of sleep, nursing a hungry baby, changes in her own body as it heals from the birth, hallucinations of a neighbor visiting, and images of hurting/killing her baby are all reminders of what many new moms go through. I was not a fan of the writing style even though it seemed effective in showing the mind of a new mom.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon Press for the ARC to read and review.