Title: The Push
Series: -
Author: Ashley Audrain
Description: 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 fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.
Review: Blythe Connor grew up with an unloving mother. That makes her a little
reluctant to become a mother herself. She’s afraid she won’t be good enough. So
when she becomes pregnant, Blythe worries quite a bit. Childbirth is enormously
hard, but in those first moments, when she holds her newborn daughter Violet, she
feels love.
Once home, Violet turns out not to be an easy baby, and Blythe still
finds it hard to feel happy. Even when she asks the night nurse if Violet is
sweet, the nurse hesitates. And that hesitation is an ominous harbinger of
things to come.
Blythe does her best to be a good mother, although she struggles to be
happy with Violet. She tries to behave as society expects of a newborn mother. In
vain, she seeks recognition from other mothers that sometimes they too are not
happy with their baby. From her husband Fox, Blythe also gets hardly any support.
Although there are occasional periods when contact between Blythe and
Violet seems slightly better, their relationship is and remains difficult. Violet
tends to gravitate towards her father, regularly rejecting Blythe. Little signs
in Violet’s behavior worry her. And when Blythe shares her worries with Fox, he
simply says she is imagining it.
Blythe and Fox eventually have a second child, son Sam, and this time
around she does feel what she “should” feel for her baby. She overflows with
love from him. At the same time, Blythe also definitely continues to do the
same for Violet. But then something terrible happens, which would change all of
their lives forever.
Blythe is the narrator of the story, which is divided in three timelines:
the current timeline, where we follow Blythe and her struggles in motherhood. The
story is told from her perspective, as she is talking to her husband Fox. The
second storyline follows Blythe as a child, how she grew up with a mother that
didn’t show her love. And the third storyline is following Blythe’s mother as a
child, with her mother. So, technically we are following three generations of
mothers. The perspective of mother Celia as a young girl was not always as
interesting, but this storyline is the one we get to learn the least from. Because
you are not always sure Blythe is a reliable narrator, you only find out at the
very end whether she was right about Violet or it was all imagined. And that
final line really shocked me to my core and left me speechless.
This book is really good. It’s a psychological thriller at times and I
felt scared for Blythe. I can understand that mothers (and fathers also) would
be terrified when reading this book. As an intentionally child-free woman I
only got the confirmation why I made the choice not to become a mother. And I
do believe that there are a lot of women that do feel like Blythe when first becoming
a mother, in different ways maybe, but it could be relatable to many women.
“The Push” is very daring in its plot choices, because it’s dealing with
motherhood and children. A lot of trigger warnings here. But it’s such an
excellent thriller that I couldn’t put down. It reminded me a bit of “We Need
to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver, which I read years ago. I don’t think I
would recommend this book to everyone, you really need to be in the right mindset
to read “The Push”. I really loved it.
Rating: 4,5/ 5
