The Push

The Push by Ashley Audrain (Pamela Dorman Books, 2021)

I don’t remember the last time I fell this deeply into a book, one that rooted itself in my subconscious, slunk in the back of my mind while handling my day-to-day, preparing for my son’s second birthday, icing cupcakes and shivering at where I thought the plot might lead. This was everything I want in a book: sharp writing, difficult muddy characters, psychological suspense, and a plot that seemed inevitably to be heading downhill toward a predictable dark climax but is still somehow shocking, heart-rending to the very last word.

I loved almost everything about this novel. I loved wading hip deep into the muddy minds of reluctant apathetic mothers whose inability to mother their daughters and various trauma are passed down generation to generation resulting in our main character Blythe and her daughter Violet who she just can’t connect with, and is it because of this disconnect that Violet becomes a more and more unnerving child, or was it in her nature, to become a sociopath?

Blythe tries so hard to be a mother, and fails, fails to love her daughter how she needs to be loved, fails to be what her husband expects of her, and fails her own expectations. It’s only when she has a second child, a son, that she finds the instinct for motherhood, connects with and loves him in the way all mothers expect to love their child: immediately, fervently, as a part of you.

Then tragedy strikes. And in the wake of losing her son, Blythe’s marriage continues to fall apart, her life goes off the rails, and we don’t really know exactly what happened in the accident that kills her son Sam, although we think we do.

Every chapter is a heart in your throat exercise at walking directly toward the scariest shadowiest part of your mind and trying not to flinch, not knowing exactly what you might find, but knowing it can’t be good. I could not stop reading this book. It’s taking up so much space in my mind, turning over just how brilliantly it was executed, how much it resonated with me. I haven’t loved a book this much in years.

The rights have already been optioned for a movie, and it’s been done by David Heyman who did Marriage Story, so I can only imagine how good a film version will be. All the hype is well deserved. An amazing debut novel, from a Canadian author whom I’ll definitely be watching for in the future.

ARC provided by the publisher through Netgalley for an honest review.