The Push

by Ashley Audrain

Published 2021

INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 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.