The best debut novel I've read in some time: a literary, deeply allusive story of a young mother and PhD student who is struggling with intense postpartum anxiety as she also confronts her own complex history as a much-loved adopted child.

Madeleine is a young-ish mother, especially for an academic, and she worries that having a child will make her seem less ambitious. Despite her extensive preparation, her birth experience is traumatic, and once she's home with her new daughter, she feels abandoned when her husband quickly heads back to work while cautioning her not to waste their limited budget. Isolated and increasingly anxious, Madeleine struggles to feel connected to her child and recollects her own experience of adoption and her ties to her loving (but also anxious) parents.

This description, though, doesn't convey the full flavour of this lyrical and often darkly comic work. It's a very literary novel: the protagonist-narrator thinks in literary references. But Madeleine's anxieties about her baby, Maud, become more obsessive: she begins to wonder if there's a reason that she doesn't feel intimately entwined with the baby, and that prompts her thinking about changelings.

A beautifully written and accomplished first novel that will probably appeal most to readers who appreciate the vast array of literary allusions.

A blazingly original, can't-look-away saga of postpartum psychosis (depression? rage? anxiety? all of it!). Perfectly captures the alienation of early motherhood and the gap - the chasm! - between expectations and reality, especially with a challenging newborn. I can't speak highly enough about this book.

An exquisite debut novel! Queen Mab is a sensitive, haunting portrayal of the jagged, liminal state of early motherhood tinged with a touch of the fae. Madeleine’s obsessive thought that her newborn is a changeling is a clever metaphor for the transformational experience of childbirth. McBride entrances the reader with an engrossing yet emotionally harrowing narrative as Madeleine descends deeper into her delusions. It is refreshing to see such a brutal recounting of the ways postpartum hormones can lead your brain into deeply delusional thinking as well as how difficult it can be to find the appropriate help in that situation. Reading Queen Mab, I was reminded very much of Elizabeth Sankey’s searing documentary “Witches,” which critically examines the ways in which postpartum mental health (especially psychosis) has been historically stigmatized and linked to the supernatural. I would love to read more by this author.

A descent-into-madness novel that feels like reading a Victorian text, but with a modern twist.

I’ve read many novels lately about motherhood and madness, but none have been as strong or compelling as this one. Without giving too much away, the postpartum psychosis captured in this book is so real and gritty and raw, that, as a reader, you have no choice but to go along for the ride. You’re inside Madeleine’s head, you’re inside her thoughts (despite the psychosis section switching to third person), and her reality is your reality. Her world makes sense. Until, all of a sudden, things get fragmented, and other dark moments from her family’s past come to light.

Beautifully written, ladened with literature references from Brontë to Yeats to Woolf, this is a powerful debut. Like most good books, it’s about many things: motherhood and madness, sure, but also family lineage. Family stories. Love - chosen or not. Belonging. Gentrification. The wilderness, the wild, the animal in all of us. Fables.

Ultimately, Queen Mab is, in part, about trying to make sense of that which doesn't make sense. And doing so through what we know best: stories. In Madeleine’s case: stories of fairies.