The Nursery

(Hardback)

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Description

The walls begin to close in on a new mother during the fragile first few days of parenthood Somewhere in New York, in a cramped two-bed apartment that wilts beneath the intense August heat, a young woman stays at home with her baby. Women have done this before now: given birth, nursed their children, held, carried, soothed. But our narrator, a talented translator in another life, doesnt know what it means to be a mother. This does not feel easy, this does not feel natural. This doesnt feel like any of the stories she has heard about parenthood. As she struggles to adjust to her role as a mother, a lifeline appears in the form of Peter, a neighbour who, like her, is confined to this apartment building. But soon his visits start to disturb as much as soothe the young woman, leaving her more fragmented than ever. The Nursery is a searing, empathetic account of those first, heady postpartum days that will speak to anyone who has felt alone, and needed a friendship to pull them out of the dark.

Reviews

'Brilliant Molnar's sentences give up riches and terrors...An essential and surprisingly thrilling book about motherhood.'

-- New York Times

'Riveting and precise,The Nurserydoes extraordinary things amidst the confinement of early motherhood.'

-- Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

'Gripping... Every page is drenched in equal parts anguish and charm.'

-- Kyra Wilder, author of Little Bandaged Days

'TheNurseryis a mesmerising 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

'The Nurseryis an essential, singular contribution to the literature of mothering as a human, embodied, fundamentally existential experience... Aunique 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

'Precisely, scaldingly true. A tense, thrilling debut that explores how a love story can also be a horror story.'

-- Clare Pollard, author of Delphi

'It was electrifying to experience the days of early motherhood through Molnar's razor sharp realism and wit.'

-- Rita Bullwinkel, Whiting award-winning author of Belly Up

'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 Nurseryis a devastating work of elegance and ambiguity.'

-- Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

'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

'A fierce psychological novel of one woman trying to reconcile the competing languages of mind and body after giving birth.'

-- Jessica Anthony, author of Enter the Aardwark

'A radical novel aboutthe harrowing early days of motherhood, as well as love, ambition, and survival,The Nurserygives precise, gorgeous language to an experience that so often feels indescribable. Szilvia Molnars astounding debut powerfully demonstrates that the intricate workings of the female mind and a womans bodily metamorphosis and struggles deserve our most reverent attention. Im obsessed with this book.'

-- Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers

'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

Author Bio

Szilvia Molnar is a writer and the foreign rights director at a New York-based literary agency.Her writing has appeared in publications includingGuernica,Lit Hub,Triangle House ReviewandTwo Serious Ladies. Originally from Budapest and raised in Sweden, she now splits her time between New York City and Austin, Texas. The Nursery is her first novel.