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WINNER of the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Best First Crime Novel
SHORTLISTED for the 2022 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
“Utterly addictive.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
“Written with an unflinching eye and a stylistically sharp, tight economy The Push is a single-sitting read, as suspenseful as any thriller, as thoughtful as any literary novel, with an almost physical force behind each of its turns and revelations.” —Toronto Star
A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family, and about a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for, and everything she feared.
Blythe Connor is determined to be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby, Violet, that she never had.
But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe doesn’t find the connection with her daughter she expected. She’s convinced something is wrong with Violet—she is distant, rejects affection, and becomes increasingly disruptive at preschool.
Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. Fox doesn’t see what she sees; he sees a wife who is struggling to cope with the day-to-day challenges of being amother. 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 natural maternal connection she’d always dreamed of. 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 rare and extraordinary gift to readers: an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, about what really happens behind the closed doors of even the most perfect-looking families and about what it feels like when women are not believed.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 5, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780735242630
- File size: 249116 KB
- Duration: 08:38:59
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from October 19, 2020
Growing up as the latest link in a long chain of toxic mother-daughter dyads, aspiring writer Blythe, the narrator of Audrain’s emotionally devastating debut, has no desire for parenthood herself, until she falls for gentle, supportive Fox Connor, who can’t imagine not having kids and convinces her otherwise. Daughter Violet’s birth three years later starts the clock ticking toward the implosion of the couple’s marriage. In the eyes of Fox, who is away most of the day at work, Violet’s an angel; to exhausted and overwhelmed Blythe, there’s something fundamentally wrong with the baby. Or is there? As Blythe worries over the years that Violet lacks normal feelings of empathy and affection, concerns that Fox keeps dismissing as only in her head, things continue to deteriorate until, desperate not to lose Fox, Blythe becomes pregnant again. Son Sam’s arrival blindsides her: to her astonishment, she loves Sam ecstatically. A tragedy precipitated by seven-year-old Violet is by no means the end of the twisty, harrowing ride to the dark side of motherhood Audrain pilots so skillfully. This is a sterling addition to the burgeoning canon of bad seed suspense, from an arrestingly original new voice. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency.
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