The Nursery

A Novel

By: Szilvia Molnar

Narrated by: Malin Barr

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

“A radical novel...I’m obsessed with this book.” —Jessamine Chan, New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good Mothers

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.

©2023 Szilvia Molnar (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

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

"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'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

Honest account of new motherhood

This book reads like a memoir because it is so realistic. Postpartum depression and negative thoughts due to sleep deprivation- so common. As wonderful and healthy that breastfeeding is, the recent extreme movement to make parents feel like a failure if they don’t breastfeed is to blame for much of this. I recommend this book to parents to be or new parents. Formula feeding is also a safe alternative and can save the mental health of new mothers going through something like the person telling this story.
The narration is excellent- hope to hear more from her.
Highly recommend

Brilliant meditation on new motherhood

A brilliant and brutally honest observation of what it is like to suddenly be someone’s mother. I couldn’t stop listening.

riveting and terrifying

Beautifully written. A treasure for anyone who loves language. A terrifying contemplation of new motherhood.

I wanted so much to like this book.

All the way through I kept thinking…… this will get better. But it didn’t. One of the top five most boring books I’ve ever read. Sorry I wasted my Audible credit on this loser.