A
Ashley Audrain
The Push
Blythe Connor is determined to be everything to her daughter that her own cold, unstable mother never was to her. But from the moment Violet is born, Blythe senses that something is wrong — a distance, a wariness, a series of small cruelties that no one else seems to notice. Her husband sees a warm, ordinary child and a wife who may be unravelling.
As Blythe struggles to be believed, she is haunted by the legacy of the damaged women who came before her, and by the growing fear that the darkness she sees in her daughter may be real, imagined, or inherited. When a devastating event strikes the family, the question of who Blythe can trust — including herself — becomes unbearable.
Ashley Audrain's tense debut is a psychological drama about motherhood, nature versus nurture, and the terror of not being believed.
A new mother convinced something is wrong with her daughter, and unsure she can trust herself.
Blythe's husband, who sees an ordinary child and a struggling wife.
Blythe and Fox's first child, whose behaviour Blythe finds increasingly hard to explain to anyone else.
Blythe and Fox's second child.
Blythe's mother, who struggled to embrace motherhood herself and abandoned the family when Blythe was twelve.