"The Women in this family are different"

Bythe comes from a dysfunctional family in which her mother couldn't bond with her. ("The women in this family are different " her mother explained). When Blythe the gives birth to her daughter, Violet, she cannot bond with her either. Violet seems to resent Blythe, who in turn senses psychopathic tendencies inner daughter.
In a gripping story reminiscent of "The Bad Seed", we are left with the question, is it nature or nurture? ( )

Solid writing that pulled me in but the second-person voice is awkward and the husband is far too two-dimensional. ( )

Addictive, gripping, relentless.
The Push had me helplessly hooked and locked in a stranglehold from the very first chapter to the very last word. If I could’ve read it in one sitting I would have. Every time I had to put it down I was itching to pick it back up again. Every time I turned a page my eyes swooped from top left to bottom right in trepidatious anticipation of what horror was going to be hurled at me next.
Eighty five short chapters written in an easy-to-read style packed with hard-to-stomach content, The Push is Blyth’s story interspersed with the childhoods and motherhoods of her grandmother Etta and mother Cecilia, revealing a cycle of maternal abuse, neglect and malfunction.
For me, the reading was pure feeling. Nail-biting tension, escalating dread, heartbreaking sadness, knife-edge apprehension. The images came crowding in after I’d devoured the words and will stay with me for a very long time.
In a world where Violets and Kevins are all too real, The Push is a chilling and thought-provoking work of fiction where maternal instincts are not necessarily a given and not all children are the little angels we believe them to be.
An awesome debut.
Highly recommended. ( )

When Push Comes to Shove

Media: Audio
Read by: Marin Ireland
Length: 8 hrs an 13. minutes

Reminiscent of Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and Lessing’s The Fifth Child The Push centers around a child who may have been born “bad”. Or is she the product of an unreliable narrator.You’ll have to read the book to the very end to find out.

Violet is the much-wanted child of the happily married Blythe and Fox . From the moment she is pushed from the birth canal however, all is not well. Blythe doesn’t bond. The baby won’t stop crying. A familiar story and in the beginning chapters I thought I was reading a book about the problems associated with postpartum trauma. It’s all a bit boring until Violet enters the world outside the cosy middle-class family.

A little boy at kinder has his hair pulled out. Or did he cut it himself? At pre-school playground another child is pushed, - I started to get the title - shoved from the platform of a climbing frame where he had been standing next to Violet. Was it an accident? The husband Fox loves Violet. She can do no wrong. He starts to think he’s married a nutcase. He has dinner with his PA. Blythe questions him. She’s neurotic. An unfeeling mother. Or is she?

Around this part of the story I was hooked. Was Blythe crazy or was her husband naive. Audrain writes about Blythe’s mother and grandmother. Both had been cold toward their daughters. I started to lose interest and thought of skipping to the end to see what happened. The maternal line just wasn’t interesting. But I plowed through. Having got this far I wasn’t about to cheat. I could leave the cheating to foxy Fox who I was beginning to dislike.

Once it’s clear that Blythe’s childhood was pretty horrible the plot takes a new turn. Blythe’s behavior becomes unhinged, bordering on the bizarre. She decides on a course of action from which there’s no turning back. As to the rest, it’d require a spoiler alert, so there’s no point.

I think The Push showed promise. The plot was good though I could have done with a bit less of the postpartum episodes and descriptions of milk and nipples. And the maternal genealogy was cumbersome. But overall it was an enjoyable read and the ending was spot on. I look forward to reading more of Audrain. ( )

Psychological