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The Push
A Novel
Bookseller recommendation
“I read Ashley Audrain’s debut, The Push, in two days because I literally couldn’t stop. What does it mean to be a good mother? What if you don’t emotionally connect with your child? How much emotional trauma is passed down from mothers to daughters? The Push examines four generations of females as well as the ways having children impacts one marriage. I loved this book.”
Rachel Watkins,
Avid Bookshop
Bookseller recommendation
“For a time, every single domestic thriller writer was called the next Gillian Flynn, and, having read dozens of them, I can say that I have finally found the writer who is actually as good—maybe better. In The Push, Audrain doesn't do that twist you never see coming, but for good reason—she wants you to see it coming so that you experience every last ounce of dread along the way. But first and foremost, Flynn's writing is about the sharp style and distinctive narrative voice, and that's what you get with Audrain's first novel: someone who knows her craft, and a narrator from whom you cannot look away. She explores our darkest, most unspeakable instincts without flinching. This is the most powerful and most literary thriller I've read in a very long time.”
Rachel,
The Book Table
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | A New York Times bestseller!
“Utterly addictive.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
“Hooks you from the very first page and will have you racing to get to the end.”—Good Morning America
A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family—and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for—and everything she feared
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.
The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.
ASHLEY AUDRAIN’s debut novel The Push was a New York Times, Sunday Times and #1 international bestseller, and a Good Morning America book club pick. It has sold in 40 territories, and a limited television series is currently in development. She previously worked as the publicity director of Penguin Books Canada, and prior to that, worked in public relations. She lives in Toronto, where she and her partner are raising their two young children. She is working on her second novel.
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Reviews
"Starkly original and compulsively readable, Ashley Audrain's THE PUSH is a deep dive into the darkest nooks and crannies of motherhood. Raw, visceral, and often disturbing, this is an intense psychological drama that will be embraced by serious book clubs and fans of Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin."– Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"THE PUSH was a poetic, propulsive read that set my nerves jangling in both horror and recognition. I read it in one sitting and it stayed with me for days afterwards. Not to be missed."
– Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone
“With its riveting prose and deep convictions, Ashley Audrain’s THE PUSH had me in its clutches from the first page. Audrain’s astute portrayal of motherhood was unsettling in its insights, yet highly entertaining on the page. Complex, nuanced, and unflinching, I inhaled this debut in one sitting."
– Karma Brown, bestselling author of Recipe for a Perfect Wife
“Intensely absorbing, gripping until the final page, The Push excavates the myths of motherhood, deftly exploring the shape-shifting landscape of parenting, the powerful impact of the past on the present, and the deep unease of our inability to ever fully know even those we hold the closest.”
– Kim Edwards, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
“The Push is written on the edge of a knife. It’s a howl in the face of what we think we know — or want to believe — about motherhood. Relentlessly compelling, distressing and beautiful, Ashley Audrain’s debut is the next Gone Girl, with shades of We Need to Talk About Kevin. I devoured it whole.”
— Marissa Stapley, bestselling author of The Last Resort
"Stayed up too late finishing [Audrain’s] deeply unsettling The Push about the darkest reaches of motherhood (and profound maternal ambivalence). Visceral, provocative, compulsive, and with the most graphic and relatable description of childbirth I've read (or written)."
– Sarah Vaughan, bestselling author of Anatomy of a Scandal
"Compelling, beautifully written and wickedly entertaining.... A tremendously thought-provoking read."
— Liz Nugent, author of Little Cruelties and Lying in Wait
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