Author(s): Szilvia Molnar

Novel | New York

The baby I hold in my arms is a leech, let's call her Button. Button is crying.

There is a before, and there is an after.

In her cramped New York apartment, a mother wilts beneath the intense August heat, struggling to adapt to her role as the silent interpreter of her newborn baby's needs. She is not the first woman to give birth, to hold and carry and soothe and cradle. But the walls of her home seem to press ever closer as she balances on the fragile tightrope between maternal instinct and the longing for all she has left behind.

A lifeline emerges in the unexpected form of Peter, her ailing upstairs neighbour, who hushes the baby with his oxygen tank in tow. They are both confined to this oppressive apartment building, and they are both running out of time. Something is soon to crack.

In this mesmerizing portrait of the first days of motherhood, Szilvia Molnar lays bare the strength it takes to redefine who you are, rediscovering the simple pleasures of life along the way.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2023

AN UNFORGETTABLE LITERARY NOVEL ABOUT MATERNAL FEAR AND THE MYTH OF IDYLLIC EARLY MOTHERHOOD

'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

Review:

'Brilliant... Molnar's sentences give up riches and terrors... An essential and surprisingly thrilling book about motherhood.' -- New York Times
'An oddly affirmative novel, alive with a dangerous self-aware humour.'-- Daily Mail
'Riveting and precise, The Nursery does extraordinary things amidst the confinement of early motherhood.' -- Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From
'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
'Gripping... Every page is drenched in equal parts anguish and charm.'-- Kyra Wilder, author of Little Bandaged Days
'The Nursery is 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
'Precisely, scaldingly true. A tense, thrilling debut that explores how a love story can also be a horror story.'-- Clare Pollard, author of Delphi
'"I used to be a translator and now I am a milk bar." So begins Molnar's brilliant debut novel about a new mother falling apart within the four walls of her apartment. With horror and honesty, this book tackles the total, painful and deeply baffling transformation of a woman into a nurturer.'-- New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

Author Biography: Szilvia Molnar is a writer and the foreign rights director at a New York-based literary agency. Her writing has appeared in publications including Guernica, Lit Hub, Triangle House Review and Two 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.