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A review by sharkybookshelf
The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar
5.0
In New York, a woman returns home to her cramped apartment after giving birth to her first child and struggles to get her bearings as both her body and identity feel ripped apart…
I’ve hardly seen any reviews of this one, which is such a shame because it was excellent. I usually avoid referencing other books in my reviews, but I suspect it has been overshadowed by Soldier Sailor, which deals with similar themes of new motherhood and post-natal depression. Soldier Sailor was very good (I’ve previously reviewed it), but I preferred The Nursery - the writing hit me harder.
This is a brutal, blunt and raw reflection of the transition to motherhood and that feeling of losing your identity - the narrator is Swedish and the writing has a directness to it that I associate with Northern Europeans. There’s no pussyfooting around the tough parts, no poetic euphemisms, and whilst it’s hard to read if you’ve been through post-natal depression, the bluntness is also…cathartic. There’s an extra dimension to the narrator’s experience since she’s not in her home country, which means she’s navigating cultural expectations not her own and is far from any potential family support - an aspect of the story that I particularly appreciated.
The non-linear way the story is told reflects the strange passage of time during the newborn phase - it’s not always immediately obvious when a chapter is set, but it works. The post-natal sleep-deprived haze and isolation was so perfectly captured with the accidental befriending of the elderly neighbour, also foreign.
A brutal, raw and no-frills depiction of the isolation of new motherhood, loss of identity and post-natal depression, skilfully told with a cathartic bluntness.