REVIEW:

It would be too easy to refer to Ashley Audrain’s novel, The Push, as just another We Need to Talk About Bad Seed Rosemary's Baby Teeth, but it doesn’t deserve it.

I’ve read all of those books, and The Push is better.*

The term “trope” exists for a reason, yet somehow a plot about a mother and child not bonding is so taboo that a handful of books tackling it often get lumped together as copycats of one another. Why is that? There have to be thousands of true crime books about murderers that don’t get called "In Cold Blood knockoffs.” And then of course there are thousands of thrillers about psychopaths who attribute their rage to having ‘evil’ moms during childhood.

But what if we see things from the mom’s first person POV, and she’s (gasp) not evil? She just feels that something is off with her daughter from birth and struggles to form a connection with her. Is she correct in feeling that way, or is her own ambivalence towards the child creating a young person who lashes out negatively for attention?

Audrain’s novel expertly tackles that question of nature vs. nurture in a very thought-provoking way. Putting readers inside the mind of mom Blythe is a genius device that allows us to feel her paranoia and distress about her frigid relationship with daughter Violet. The writing is so well done that it’s difficult to put the book down. In fact, reading The Push is a little like driving by a car crash. It’s hard to witness, but also hard to look away.

The Push is not an easy read by any means, and I even felt my mood darken more and more with each passing page. I wouldn’t recommend it to people looking for a book to “enjoy,” but I wouldn’t hesitate to put it in the hands of anyone looking for a compelling one.

(*Rosemary’s Baby actually has a pretty spectacular audiobook narrated by Mia Farrow. It’s got to be in my all-time Top 5, and if you like to be spooked you’ll want to check that out asap.)

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

A tense, pause-resisting psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family - and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for - and everything she feared.

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby, Violet, that she herself never had.

But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter - she doesn't behave like most children do.

Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.

Then their son, Sam, is born - and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she'd always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fallout forces Blythe to face the truth.

The Push is a tour de force you will listen to in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.