Privacy

by Molly Young

40 pages, chapbook

Published January 1, 2025

Reviews

[tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am going to personally try molly young’s obgyn at the hague

[tori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will read anything Molly writes. Loved it.

[Marie Charron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Molly Young’s writing, and to read something so intimate and profound was a real gift. Pregnancy and birth is both deeply individual and totally universal, and I understand why it’s not written about more. I think it’s hard to take something that so many people have experienced and truly imbed it with the gravity and weight of actually living the experience. Almost immediately in retrospect, the experience feels like it happened to someone else and is yet imprinted in every single cell of your being, for life. “Privacy” manages to extrapolate both the meaning and the mundanity of the experience, and it felt like a privilege to read.

[Stowstow · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a little cracker of a book. As Young points out, not a lot is written of pregnancies outside of medical textbooks and wildly conflicting doctor’s office pamphlets, so getting a meaty look into one woman’s experience feels very generous. The unexpected element of this story was how many laugh-out-loud moments Young wove into her tale. Only a truly talented writer could pull off warmth and humour while bopping around the frightening US medical system. Loved it.

[sula · Rating 5 out of 5]

genius

[Boy Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah this is a little bit of awesome. The number one thing to know is it's hilarious. Young is incredibly funny and she writes in a way that is laugh out loud funny. Even when it seems she's going to die from post natal complications she'll rip a huge laugh out of you.

Crackers include:

An extract from a birthing manual she was reading from the late 1800's

In an 1882 manual called “Enlightened Woman,” a physician called Elna Haverfield provides the following clever cure for nausea: Drink one cup of coffee first thing in the morning. If that doesn’t work, insert a morphine suppository.

Reflections on her own work

I wonder if I’ll skim this journal in a year and it will be like sifting through a box of toenail clippings collected by a lunatic.

general observations

How is a person supposed to reconcile the wish to be horizontal with the necessity to keep up a job?

There's also some startlingly clear sighted observations that are far more poignant than funny.

As many religious and non-religious traditions have demonstrated, the most reliable way to feel Valuable is to help others. Over the past century, and accelerating in the past twenty years, so many forms of secular helping—volunteering, elder care, organized clean-ups, candy-striping, etc—have diminished or gone private or simply vanished, especially if you live in a large city. Anyone can seek out such opportunities, but they are not automatically integrated into daily life. I am always reminding myself to go make these commitments—not out of pure altruism, but because they provide me with the incredible luxury of not having to question the worth of my being!

Having a child is (notoriously) another way to achieve this luxury, since the child’s dependence renders the parent instantly non-expendable. I’m curious to know if becoming a mother will increase my appetite for other forms of time-giving or if it will quench the appetite and cause me to become even less helpful and more selfish.

But then we're straight back to the laughs.

Proctalgia fugax sounds like the name of a Thomas Pynchon character or a parasitic fungus but it is neither. It’s a truncheoning pain that occurs in the lowermost back area during periods of stress, anxiety, or pregnancy. Proctalgia fugax has recently brought itself to my attention. I wish nothing would ever “bring itself to my attention.” Only bad things do.

Then there's this beautiful section

Taped to the nursery wall is a handwritten sign listing various reasons she might be crying. When the rasping and wailing begins, we consult the sign, moving through each option to eliminate it:

Hungry
Gassy
Diaper
Cold
Hot
Congested
Unswaddled
Pacifier

There are only eight reasons on earth why she could possibly cry. Eventually (and tragically) there will be more.

If I had one critique it would be that it's too short (mainly because I just wanted more) and it maybe fades a tiny bit towards the end. But that's to be expected as the birth comes rushing closer and Young becomes understandably fatigued.

If what Young says is true

Time spent laughing might be the most easily quantified measure of happiness.

Then you couldn't do much better than give this a read.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Molly Young’s Privacy, she wonders why there are plenty of stories about motherhood but none about pregnancy. Is it that pregnancy is boring compared with everything that comes after?

Pregnancy is not boring — it is highly dramatic — but, if I recall, it’s also the last time in your life when you are narcissistic in the way that a young person is narcissistic. After you have a baby, you are narcissistic in the way a middle aged person is narcissistic. I look back at diary entries from my pregnancy and I’m like this person is clueless! I don’t recognize this narcissism at all!

I liked reading this because it reminded me of that mindset, and it reminded me of what I read in some woo woo book about childbirth: that when you are giving birth, you are murdering the maiden to become the mother. I thought about that as I headed to the hospital: today, I am going to murder a maiden.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful, if briefly harrowing! Molly Young turns her trademark wit and fascination for the esoteric on her own growing body. Keenly observed, totally singular. I’ve noticed this sharp and distinctive and finely honed voice in her writing from the last few years—it turns whatever subject she chooses into one worth reading. What a gift!!!!

[Alix T.]

More of a zine (<100 pages); so personal and beautifully written. Loved it (lots of highlighted graphs) but not sure I can even assign a star rating to this kind of writing

[Ke Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

have never bought or read a book as quickly. molly young is something else. healing.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

i will read anything and everything Molly writes

[Kiely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Molly Young does it again!!!!!

[mir · Rating 5 out of 5]

get this woman a new obgyn immediately

[Patrick King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful, beautifully written, and oh so funny. How could you not enjoy everything Molly Young writes?

[Kelsey Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

nothing short of perfect

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

The body horror and descriptive language are incredible. The passage about the breast pump nearly destroyed me. I too fantasized about killing her OBGYN by the end. A perfect work.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good! I laughed a lot.

[Meaghan Crabill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would read anything Molly Young writes

[Katharine Meister · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a reason why so few books are written about pregnancy. Everyone’s journey is unique.