the nursery (US)

North American edition published March 2023 with Pantheon Books

Cover by Linda Huang

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The Nursery

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A “brilliant...essential and surprisingly thrilling book about motherhood” (The New York Times) and the early postpartum days, following a woman struggling with maternal fear and its looming madness and showing how difficult and fragile those 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 neighbour, 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.

Praise

“Brilliant...So relentlessly quotable...As happens with stunning regularity in this book, Molnar’s sentence gives up riches and terrors. She is describing a transformation that is total, painful and deeply baffling...Molnar pushes this transformation into the stuff of quiet horror. In doing so, she’s written an essential and surprisingly thrilling book about motherhood…A sense of looming violence stains the entire book...An honest rendering.”
―Claire Dederer, The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)

“Molnar has written a daring and much-needed novel that has some of the hothouse, unflinching quality of Sylvia Plath’s late poetry.”
―The Atlantic

“A postpartum page-turner…[The Nursery] is an engaging experiment in uncomfortable empathy that finds its tonal antecedents in cerebral body horror movies like David Cronenberg’s The Brood and David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and its stylistic sisterhood in the early avant-garde confessionals of French novelist and screen writer Marguerite Duras.“
―The Texas Observer

"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."
―The Daily Mail (UK)

“The Nursery dares to question the inviolable dictates of a mother’s love when a human is reduced to her suffering—perhaps no love is unconditional after all. What is unconditional, Molnar reminds us, is time. Time is “the main character and culprit” with which the narrator has the most bewildering relationship, but it is time that ultimately saves her.”
―BOMB (Editor's Choice)

“Not since The Yellow Wallpaper has there been a book that so vividly describes a situation within motherhood as does The Nursery. Matrescence—or the process of becoming a mother—even in the absence of any complications, could be thought of as a hero’s journey: a time of challenge, stress, growth, and ultimately transformation. We highly recommend this book to all psychiatrists who see women in their practices. And to all parents.”
―Psychiatric Times

“In the “maternal prison of her apartment,” a new mother copes with the dizzying dissatisfaction of postpartum life. One of the joys of reading The Nursery goes beyond recognizing these moments and feelings from my own time with newborns—although seeing that in a book is exciting enough—and includes the sentence-level beauty of the tiniest, private moments between a mother and child. “Has there ever been a description of a mother holding her child for hours? Has anyone unraveled the little hours? My state might be a portrayal of the elasticity of time.” Molnar writes through the delicate balance of life-as-art and comes out the other side with a brilliant novel.”
―Lithub

“[The Nursery] is beautifully written, line-by-line. Its non-chronological structure is deceptively sophisticated, and mimics the sleep-deprived time-fog of the early days. Its metaphors are unexpected and fruitful…Molnar’s writing on the protagonist’s husband, John, is some of the best in the book, starting with his making Button a jazz playlist as his contribution to her homecoming. I laughed out loud.
―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

“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…”
―Library Journal

“Fans of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder should look forward to The Nursery. It is a searing portrait of postpartum motherhood. Molnar’s visceral writing is to die for.”
―Debutiful

“Molnar’s entrancing debut captures the volatile inner life of a woman with postpartum depression…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…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.”
―Publishers Weekly

“A radical novel about the harrowing early days of motherhood, as well as love, ambition, and survival, The Nursery gives precise, gorgeous language to an experience that so often feels indescribable. Szilvia Molnar’s astounding debut powerfully demonstrates that the intricate workings of the female mind and a woman’s bodily metamorphosis and struggles deserve our most reverent attention. I’m obsessed with this book.”  
―Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers

“The Nursery is an essential, singular contribution to the literature of mothering as a human, embodied, fundamentally existential experience. Molnar captures precisely how the postpartum time can feel both maddeningly uneventful and paradoxically dire, as a mother’s self continues the transfiguration begun in pregnancy. The novel explores the quicksand of the nothing-time that is postpartum, examining and describing so many mercurial milestones I had forgotten about but immediately recognized…The Nursery presents, with great care, a remedy of artful concision: a revelation of the intrusive thoughts, the ravaging of the body caused by parturition, the torturous effects of sleep deprivation, the chasm that can appear overnight between the new mother and the new father; and, beautifully, the difference between the imagined, potential child, and the real baby. It would be too easy to say this book is about postpartum depression; I caution against any reading that would interpret this story of mothering via diagnosis, as disordered or aberrant, rather than utterly common. The Nursery is more importantly read as a unique and painstakingly observed translation of a brutal, amorphous phase of life, into a necessary and fascinating work of fiction.”
―Merritt Tierce, author of Love Me Back

“With unsparing, hypnotic, and fearless prose, Szilvia Molnar captures the texture, rhythms, and agonies of the post-partum body and mind. I found so much pleasure in the tension between this haunting debut's warm, vibrant intimacy and its clear-eyed, occasionally violent accounting of the body at war with itself. The Nursery is a devastating work of elegance and ambiguity.”
―Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

“I was blown away by this book. Molnar’s precision and phenomenal ear for language gives us new words for the oldest experience-―weaving a fiction that is at once somber and joyful, sly and earnest, nimble and painstaking, perverse and profoundly invigorating. Forget “I feel seen.” I have known some of this narrator’s dark moments myself, yes. But more than seen I felt awed and grateful for this art and talent. A concise, powerful novel on bringing art and life into the world, by a beautiful prose stylist.”
―Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State 

“Riveting and precise, The Nursery does extraordinary things amidst the confinement of early motherhood, creating something urgent and incisive. It is a rare book in many ways, not least in its crisp directness and ability to hold the reader’s attention in such a compact, densely woven narrative space.”
―Megan Hunter, author of The Harpy and The End We Start From

“Precisely, scaldingly true. A tense, thrilling debut that explores how a love story can also be a horror story.”
―Clare Pollard, author of Delphi

“The Nursery is a novel about motherhood that 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. I was so grateful it found its way into my hands, this reeling vision of postpartum experience unlike any I’d ever read.” 
―Louisa Hall, author of Speak and Trinity

“While reading The Nursery I found myself shocked to encounter things on the page that I had never previously seen depicted in literature: a breast pump, mesh underwear, hulking bloodied pads. Szilvia Molnar writes inside the many blank and hushed-tone spaces of a mothering existence. Miraculously, while The Nursery depicts the reality of early motherhood with acute accuracy, unreal things do happen: time stops, time becomes infinite, moss covers whole apartments, ghosts appear, and ghosts go away―but these unreal events fit perfectly into the otherworldly nature of growing, and then birthing, another body. 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 of one woman trying to reconcile the competing languages of mind and body after giving birth. Like Tim O’Brien and Sheila Heti, The Nursery is powered by the shape of Molnar’s imagination but also the brutal truth of personal experience, proving to us that there is no way to tell a true birth story.” 
―Jessica Anthony, author of Enter the Aardwark

“II y a longtemps qu’on n’avait pas lu un premier roman aussi impressionnant. Un cocktail de maternité, de folie et de littérature. Szilvia Molnar : retenez ce nom !”
―Damien Aubel, Transfuge (France)

“Szilvia Molnar, avec la rage d’une survivante, raconte la dépression postnatale, ne cache rien de ce qui se passe, odeur, toucher, dégoût, ennui, amour […]. L’horreur de la trivialité.”
―Colombe Schneck, Madame Figaro (France)

“Un récit à l’atmosphère prégnante, captivant par son authenticité sans fards, délivrant quelques pensées inavouables au passage…”
―Sophie Rosemont, Vogue France (France)

“La beauté de Milk-bar réside dans la mélancolie qui s’y exprime. Mais à cet apprentissage de la parentalité se superpose celui de la création, jusqu’à s'y confondre - sans doute est-ce dans ce qui a été perdu, dans ce décalage avec l’être aimé, le monde, soi-même, dans cette faille qui fissure le plafond que vient s’insinuer la littérature.”
―Avril Ventura, ELLE (France)

“Face à une détresse psychologique, un roman, s’il est réussi, peut être aussi fort qu’un témoignage. C’est le cas de celui-ci…”
―Cécile Pivot, Femme Actuelle (France)

“Une tranche de vie assaisonnée d’humour autant que d’inquiétude.”
―Pierre Maury, Le Soir (France)

“L’écrivaine, Szilvia Molnar, parvient à rendre sensible dans ses phrases la surprise et la douce lassitude qui s’entremêlent chez cette mère.”
―Virginie Bloch-Lainé, Libération (France)

“Avec détermination, courage et acuité, le premier roman de Szilvia Molnar nous fait pénétrer les affres de la dépression post-partum et s’inscrit comme un ouvrage incontournable sur le sujet.”
―Camille Cloarec, Le Matricule des Anges (France)

“Un roman émouvant, troublant, indispensable.” 
―Gaël (France)

“Premier roman de Szilvia Molnar, Milk-bar dissèque, de la manière la plus concrète et explicite, la dépression post-partum à travers le monologue d’une femme, traductrice du suédois à New York”
―Sophie Joubert, L'Humanité (France)

“Il y a des livres qui se détachent immédiatement de l'ordinaire de la production littéraire. C'est le cas de cet obsédant Milk-bar, ouvert un peu par hasard et écrit par une parfaite inconnue, Szilvia Molnar, qui signe ici son premier ouvrage.”
―Rémi Bonnet, La Montagne/L’Écho Républican (France)

“Szilvia Molnar met en scène le post-partum vécu par une mère qui tente d'appréhender ses nouvelles responsabilités.
―Nathalie Six, Avantages (France)

“À travers une ambiance légèrement inquiétante, l’Américaine d’origine suédoise et hongroise Szilvia Molnar décrit frontalement l’épuisement et l’hébétement de la période post-partum. Des thèmes encore tabous dans la littérature.” 
―Amandine Schmitt, Le Nouvel Obs (France)

“On aura rarement lu une telle description de la solitude de la maternité et des pensées indicibles qui l’accompagnent parfois.”
―Charles Knappek, Métal Hurlant (France)

“Szilvia Molnar traite des sujets sensibles, comme le lien mère et enfant parfois si difficile à installer.
―Modes et Travaux (France)

“Dire la maternité, cela passe aussi par un langage du corps, un partage de l’expérience physique de la maternité, propos au cœur d’un impressionnant premier roman sorti début mars, Milk-bar de Szilvia Molnar. On y suit les pensées parfois hallucinées d’une jeune mère en plein effondrement, dévastée par le post-partum et les prises de conscience qui s’y succèdent.”
―Aurore Engelen, Focus Vif (France)

“On aura rarement lu une telle description de la solitude de la maternité et des pensées indicibles qui l’accompagnent parfois.”
―Caroline Pernes, Télérama (France)

“Szilvia Molnar erzählt vom offenen Körper und der offenen Seele einer Frau, die gerade ein Kind geboren hat. Für all das Wunde und das Wunderbare, das Zärtliche und das Erschreckende, für das es noch viel zu wenig Worte gibt, findet sie genau die richtigen.
―Maria-Christina Piwowarski (Germany)

“Molnar schreibt präzise und kraftvoll, und in einer Form, die es auch kinderlosen Menschen möglich macht, die Brutalität und Zärtlichkeit dieses Zustands annähernd nachzuvollziehen.
―Galore (Germany)

“Szilvia Molnar hat einen sehr ehrlichen und gerade deshalb so bewegenden Roman geschrieben.”
―Christoph Amend, Zeit Magazin Newsletter (Germany)

“Szilvia Molnar hat Großes erschaffen, weil sie nachhakt und infrage stellt. Sie stößt die gesellschaftliche Erhabenheit des Mutterseins von einem ganz ganz hohen Podest [...].”
―melodram (Germany)

“Szilvia Molnar bricht in ihrem Debütroman Milchbar [...] zahlreiche Tabus, über die sich bislang kaum einer oder besser gesagt eine zu sprechen oder zu schreiben traut.”
―Frankfurter Neue Presse (Germany)

“Es ist höchste Zeit, Probleme wie Wochenbettdepression und postnatale Störungen ernst zu nehmen und zu enttabuisieren. Dazu hat Szilvia Molnar mit ihrem Roman den Grundstein gelegt”
―merkur.de (Germany)

“Molnars Debütroman überzeugt in seiner ungeschönten Unverblümtheit und wunderbaren Übersetzung der Leipzigerin Julia Wolf. Er sollte Pflichtlektüre für werdende Eltern sein, erzählt er doch sehr lebendig von den Kontrasten zwischen den oft verschwiegenen Untiefen des Wochenbetts und den Erwartungen ans Mutterwerden.”
―Kreuzer (Germany)

“Narodziny dziecka to powolna i bolesna śmierć matki, a dokładniej―jej ego sprzed narodzin maleństwa. W pewnym sensie, kobieta, która dała życie, musi umrzeć, po to, by narodzić się od nowa―jako zupełnie nowy byt―jako matka. Jedyna cecha tożsamości, której nie można upłynnić.
Niezwykła powieść  Szilvii Molnar pozwala nam skonfrontować się z pytaniem―jaka siła popycha kobiety w XXI wieku do tego, by zamiast rodzić nowe powieści, nowe filmy, nowe formy antyrakowej farmakoterapii, nowe filtry powietrza, nowe modele rozruszników do serca, nowe ustroje, czy nowe idee społeczne―wciąż, jakby pchane szaleństwem―decydujemy się rodzić dzieci? Dlaczego wciąż z taką determinacją pakujemy się w to ciążowe, porodowe i po-porodowe „piekło”, które zamyka nas w czterech ścianach izolując od świata, zamiast do niego zbliżać i czynić go lepszym? Molnar w dewastujący sposób opisuje tę niezwykłą relację pomiędzy kobietą, która musi odejść, by narodziła się matka a jej nigdy nienasyconą poczwarką i jest to―uwierzcie mi―potężna pieśń o życiu.”
―Agnieszka Szpila, author of Heksy (Polish)

“Molnar viker aldrig med blicken från den kroppsliga chock och sipprande sörja som en förlossning innebär eller de fullkomligt bisarra tankar en nyförlöst kvinnakan drabbas av. Bildspråket är vackert och drastiskt, en bebis kan ha tulpanens tunga huvud eller liknas vid en glänsande färsk kycklingkropp som snart ska styckas. Man förstår att Molnar förstår att det är litteratur hon skriver, varken loggbok eller dagbok: här får overklighetens lungsjuka män, spindlar, och dragspelsmusik tränga in och göra verkligheten verkligare – det är så upp-friskande att hon tar sig an sitt ämne på det sättet.”
―Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden)

“Molnar skriver på ett ärligt och obarmhärtigt realistiskt sätt om livet som nybliven mamma. Om den oändliga amningen, de krackelerade nätterna, om avståndet till alla andra utom bebisen. Och emellanåt, när hungern och tröttheten blir för stark, de nästan surrealistiska fantasierna om hur det ömtåliga barnet hotas av både yttre faktorer och hennes egen önskan om att få vara ensam igen. Den distanserade sakligheten och avsaknaden av förundran inför det nya lilla livet gör berättelsen märkligt drabbande att läsa, men som tur är genomsyras den också av en rå och drastisk humor som balanserar texten.”
―BTJ (Sweden)

“Molnar takes apart the language of new motherhood and turns it into something deliriously fresh. This is the book I wish I’d had when I was in the narrator’s shoes.”
―Jessica Friedmann, author of Things That Helped

“The Nursery is a mesmerizing read, a deeply affecting account of early motherhood that’s full of honesty and power, tenderness and fragility. I loved it.”
―Emylia Hall, author of The Book of Summers

“Szilvia Molnar’s gripping debut pulls the reader into the surreal, utterly strange, and deeply moving world of new motherhood. Molnar pushes past the limits of ordinary language and traditional narrative structure to reveal the most hidden, vulnerable, and self-altering moments that happen to a person just after giving birth. Inside this slim volume, delicacy and tenderness rub shoulders with a kind of horrifying, animal unease and every page is drenched in equal parts anguish and charm. For fans of Julia Fine’s The Upstairs House and Louise Bourgeois’s Maman.
―Kyra Wilder, author of Little Bandaged Days

“This may be the most powerful and provocative novel of the year. The narrator describes her battle with postpartum depression, something only experienced by a select group and one that is impossible to imagine for any others. But the depths the mother reaches into cannot fail to stir the thoughts and emotions of any reader and certainly lead to empathy for any person suffering through similar anxiety, pain and fear. A distinctive novel on a crucial subject, it should be required reading for any administrator or legislator who does not believe extended maternity leave is not beneficial and essential for the well being of all of society.”
―Bill Cusumano, Square Books in Oxford, MS

“The Nursery is a hypnotic book. The writing excellently focuses on the moment-to-moment nature of new motherhood and postpartum depression. With the main character’s quick flashbacks and sporadic google searches sprinkled throughout the narrative, Molnar had me living in the seconds/minutes between the characters’ waking, sleeping, and conversing. It’s tense at times, exhausting at other times, but it’s ultimately absorbing in a great way.”
―Stuart McCommon, Novel Books in Memphis, TN

“In The Nursery a new mother who is also a translator grapples with exhaustion, isolation, and postpartum depression. She’s visited by her lonely elderly neighbor who, perturbed by the baby’s incessant crying, becomes a supportive figure when her husband leaves for work each day. An excellent debut about the challenges of new motherhood and finding companionship in unlikely people.”
―Caitlin Baker, Island Books on Mercer Island, WA

“A powerful and haunting novel about post-partum fog and depression.”
―Claire Benedict, Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, VT

“Wow, wow, wow. A gripping, can’t-look-away, utterly raw novel about a mother surviving her first week with her newborn. Funny and dark, Molnar’s sharp writing depicts the staggering surreality of having your life (and hormones) completely upended by childbirth. This novel is not for the faint of heart, but then, neither is motherhood. Highly recommended for fans of Nightbitch and School for Good Mothers.”
―Julie Wernersbach, P&T Knitwear, New York, NY

“What happens when maternal instinct sours? When post-partum depression and intrusive thoughts replace the anticipated bliss of new motherhood? The Nursery is a remarkable debut novel about the early postpartum days of motherhood: a visceral and revelatory portrait of a woman struggling with maternal fear and its looming madness, showing how difficult and fragile those days can be, and how vital love is to pull anyone out from the dark.”
―Book Culture, New York, NY