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A review by popgoesbitty
The Push by Ashley Audrain
4.0
CWs: death of children/infants, miscarriage, suicide
This was... interesting to read while 20 weeks pregnant. Sheesh.
In all seriousness, this was a dark but gorgeous read. I blew threw it in two days, but could've easily knocked it out in a single sitting. It asks tough questions about womanhood, motherhood, and feels particularly poignant for women of my generation. I loved the split narrative between the three generations of women. The undulating wave of generational, unchecked, undiagnosed postpartum depression that permeated the novel was powerful.
As I read The Push and maneuvered the more "thriller-y" pieces of it, it felt important to constantly analyze who I was to believe. But by the end, I realized I was missing the point. Whether the narrator was actually correct or just *thought* she was correct, she wasn't being heard, wasn't being given a choice, and wasn't being cared for the way women in postpartum so often aren't. And the consequences carry on for decades.
It lost a star simply because the trend of unreliable, gaslit women narrators is getting stale in this genre and honestly, I feel myself avoiding domestic thrillers simply for that reason. But the remaining 4 stars are strong ones, and Audrain did something quite special here and for the genre as a whole.
This was... interesting to read while 20 weeks pregnant. Sheesh.
In all seriousness, this was a dark but gorgeous read. I blew threw it in two days, but could've easily knocked it out in a single sitting. It asks tough questions about womanhood, motherhood, and feels particularly poignant for women of my generation. I loved the split narrative between the three generations of women. The undulating wave of generational, unchecked, undiagnosed postpartum depression that permeated the novel was powerful.
As I read The Push and maneuvered the more "thriller-y" pieces of it, it felt important to constantly analyze who I was to believe. But by the end, I realized I was missing the point. Whether the narrator was actually correct or just *thought* she was correct, she wasn't being heard, wasn't being given a choice, and wasn't being cared for the way women in postpartum so often aren't. And the consequences carry on for decades.
It lost a star simply because the trend of unreliable, gaslit women narrators is getting stale in this genre and honestly, I feel myself avoiding domestic thrillers simply for that reason. But the remaining 4 stars are strong ones, and Audrain did something quite special here and for the genre as a whole.