The Nursery

Molnar’s entrancing debut captures the volatile inner life of a woman with postpartum depression. The narrator, a literary translator, feels isolated while caring for her baby girl, Button, and, as her days blur into each other, she has a hard time seeing herself as more than a “milk bar,” and her mind frequently reverts to thoughts of hurting Button. Molnar braids the narrator’s gloomy reflections on motherhood (“Women have done this before me and nothing changed. And women will do this after me”) with accounts of visits from an elderly neighbor who is mourning the death of his wife, and interactions with her husband, John. In one of the most powerful passages, the narrator studies John and finds him completely unchanged while her body has been torn apart, her career put on hold, and her time fully dedicated to raising her daughter. Though it’s unclear how some of the pieces are meant to fit, such as the visits from the neighbor, Molnar brings a cutting verisimilitude to her portrayal of the narrator’s fuzzy state of mind, and she’s equally unsparing with her vivid descriptions of childbirth, recovery, and the physical demands of early motherhood. It amounts to a powerful look at what a new mother endures. Agent: Kate Johnson, Wolf Literary. (Mar.)