Materska

About a book

DENISA

FULMEKOVÁ

Maternity Leave

Original title: Materská

Genre: novel

Slovak edition: IKAR

CONTENT

Eva goes to the maternity hospital to give birth to the long-awaited child. She carefully prepared for his arrival, and along with her, her husband and their first-born sixteen-year-old daughter are looking forward to the baby. Finally, the longed-for moment and the fulfillment of the most beautiful dream is about to arrive. However, shortly after arriving at the maternity ward, Eva is struck by fear. Suddenly, he gets scared that she won't be able to handle the new situation. She becomes a mother, but instead of happiness, she is overcome by sadness and distress. She holds her little daughter in her arms, but despite this, she is unable to enjoy and experience the joy she was entitled to. An honest story about the difficult beginnings of motherhood, family life and the courage to knock on the door of a psychiatric clinic when necessary.

REVIEWS

“There are many contemporary women who have survived or are going through maternity leave, but few of them translate their feelings, experiences, and observations into a book. In the book Maternity Leave by Denisa Fulmeková, despite the author's license, you can feel an autobiographical experience. Perhaps thanks to this, an extremely honest statement about the problems with motherhood and an impressive insight into the soul of today's woman was created.

The author divided the story into two parts: Maternity and Home. She composes it as the story of the writer Eva, who decided to give birth to a second child in her forties, regardless of various complications. It seems like it will be an idyll. After all, she has a loving, busy husband, Filip, and an equally accommodating first-born daughter, sixteen-year-old Simonka. However, her own psyche unexpectedly betrays her in the form of postpartum depression, and she must find the courage to knock on the door of the psychiatric clinic.

Denisa Fulmeková is a well-known name in our writing scene. She made her debut in 2001 under the pseudonym Mina Murray with a collection of short stories So what, she published a collection of poetry I'm almost gone, she is also the author of the Tarot manual, 78 steps to a more creative life, but she made her mark primarily as the author of successful female psychological prose. Maternity leave seemed to loosely follow up on some of the titles with the theme of desired motherhood. Her heroine does not have existential or relationship problems, but more she is dealing with her own psychological failure. The plus point is that the author was able to look at it with an open mind, she is not subject to sentiment, and she portrays individual situations and the characters of caregivers and friends with a certain amount of humor and self-irony. He also comments humorously on celebrity interviews about motherhood in tabloid magazines. Of course, she also formulates knowledge of everyday psychology, such as: "I'm learning to be more mature, not to be afraid of life and responsibility, I'm learning to be a good mother again," to conclude: "The relay of motherhood continues. And again, nicely from the beginning...”

Elena Ťapajová, Knižná revue, Slovak Republic