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helen_t_reads 's review for:
The Nursery
by Szilvia Molnar
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
In blistering August heat, a Mum brings home her new-born daughter, Button, to a tiny New York apartment. The narrator mother is nameless. She interweaves non-chronological episodes from her anti-natal life as a translator of literary fiction, with scenes from her post-natal life in the claustrophobic, lonely apartment.
This is a far cry from the fictional, saccharine-sweet world of baby formula adverts with serene mothers and napping, cherubic babies. Button cries. Lots. And needs to breast feed. Lots. Her partner is supportive, but absent and ineffectual, and she copes with the physical after-effects of the birth, and her helpless feelings of ignorance and inadequacy, alone. This novel perfectly captures the bone-weary, mind-numbing exhaustion of the new mother’s first weeks, and the enforced surrender of her own needs as she tends to those of your baby.
However, her overwhelming tiredness soon tips over into something far more serious as she begins to have obsessive and intrusive thoughts, including thoughts about harming the baby, and she displays other classic symptoms of post-partum depression too.
This novel is not an easy read – it is brutal, honest, visceral, and no holds barred - and if you’ve ever given birth yourself it vividly evokes memories of those sleep deprived early weeks where all you do is feed, carry and nurse your baby. Those stirred memories of your own extreme tiredness, combined with the depiction of the deteriorating mental state of the Mum, and her lack of help and support, make this an anxious, tense and extremely powerful read. For all that though, the narration is dreamlike, which reinforces the picture of the narrator’s mental state, and when her elderly neighbour from the floor above begins to visit her, you are never quite sure if he is real or perhaps an imaginary friend, conjured by her mental state.
Exploring themes of motherhood, identity, loneliness and mental health this is a novel with great impact, splashes of the darkest humour, and a note of hope at its end.
With thanks to Oneworld for the Proof in exchange for an honest review.
This is a far cry from the fictional, saccharine-sweet world of baby formula adverts with serene mothers and napping, cherubic babies. Button cries. Lots. And needs to breast feed. Lots. Her partner is supportive, but absent and ineffectual, and she copes with the physical after-effects of the birth, and her helpless feelings of ignorance and inadequacy, alone. This novel perfectly captures the bone-weary, mind-numbing exhaustion of the new mother’s first weeks, and the enforced surrender of her own needs as she tends to those of your baby.
However, her overwhelming tiredness soon tips over into something far more serious as she begins to have obsessive and intrusive thoughts, including thoughts about harming the baby, and she displays other classic symptoms of post-partum depression too.
This novel is not an easy read – it is brutal, honest, visceral, and no holds barred - and if you’ve ever given birth yourself it vividly evokes memories of those sleep deprived early weeks where all you do is feed, carry and nurse your baby. Those stirred memories of your own extreme tiredness, combined with the depiction of the deteriorating mental state of the Mum, and her lack of help and support, make this an anxious, tense and extremely powerful read. For all that though, the narration is dreamlike, which reinforces the picture of the narrator’s mental state, and when her elderly neighbour from the floor above begins to visit her, you are never quite sure if he is real or perhaps an imaginary friend, conjured by her mental state.
Exploring themes of motherhood, identity, loneliness and mental health this is a novel with great impact, splashes of the darkest humour, and a note of hope at its end.
With thanks to Oneworld for the Proof in exchange for an honest review.