Ashley Audrain began writing her first novel, The Push, after leaving her job as publicity director at Penguin Books Canada to raise her two young children. At Penguin, she worked with bestselling authors including Khaled Hosseini, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Meg Wolitzer. Prior to Penguin, she worked at a global public relations agency in consumer marketing.
Today, Ashley Audrain is on the blog to answer a few of our questions about The Push! Read on …
Ashley Audrain (Photo by Barbara Stoneham).
Tell us about your book, The Push!
AA: Blythe Connor comes from a long history of women who have struggled with motherhood, but she’s determined to break the cycle with her own daughter, Violet. Not long after Violet is born, though, Blythe begins to suspect something isn’t right—she’s different than other children her age and acts in malicious ways. Her husband can’t see what Blythe sees—he thinks her concerns about Violet are all in her head. But when everything Blythe fears is crystalized into one tragic moment, they all must reckon with the repercussions, and the unsettling notion that she might have been right. It’s a story about the anxieties and expectations of motherhood, whether we can ever really know the people we hold closest, and what happens when we don’t listen to women’s truths.
What made you want to dive into the world of mother-daughter relationships in this novel?
AA: Mother-daughter relationships can be the most complex relationships of all—they are so often loaded with emotion. We can see so much of ourselves in our mothers (whether we like that or not!) and yet we understand their identity through quite a narrow lens in that we can’t know who they were as women before they had children. I liked the idea of exploring a chain of mothers and daughters who want to be different, but feel a pull to the women who came before them—are their difficult patterns and behaviours learned, or in their genes? What does each mother owe her daughter? There are so many interesting questions to explore.
How did your own experience of motherhood inform the writing of this book?
AA: When my son was two weeks old, he became quite ill, and we ended up spending many weeks in the children’s hospital. I thought a lot in those days about the expectations of motherhood—what we’re taught it will be like, how we’re meant to feel, even how we’re expected to speak about it. There is so little room for an experience that is not idyllic. Those seeds of thinking sent my mind wandering to a darker place (as writers’ minds do!): what if a mother couldn’t love her child? What if that child did something she couldn’t forgive? What if nobody believed her? The circumstance in The Push is of course an extreme example of motherhood, but the main character has feelings of anxiety and fear that I think many of us can relate to.
Are there any other books about difficult mothers and daughters that inspired you?
AA: Many! I’ve always loved books that explore motherhood, especially a darker side. White Oleander by Janet Fitch and The Deep End of the Ocean by Jaquelyn Mitchard were published in the 1990s. I remember reading them as a teenager and they really stayed with me. More recently, books like Lullaby by Leila Slimani and The Need by Helen Phillip have narratives about motherhood that evoke feelings of horror—both explore the connection between love and fear, and how close they can feel to each other, which is something that interests me too in writing.
How did you come to be a writer?
AA: I have always loved to write, and experimented with fiction during nights and weekends, but pursuing a full-time career with a stable paycheck in public relations felt more prudent! I did, though, have the privilege of working in publishing for two years, and that time gave me a huge education in writing and publishing—I read more widely than I ever had before, and gained insight into the process of bringing a book to market. When I had my son and decided not to go back to work, it felt like the right opportunity to finally pursue writing a novel. I had a surge of creativity after becoming a mother, and the story came to me quite vividly.
You’ve previously worked in publishing with authors like Elizabeth Gilbert and Meg Wolitzer. How does it feel to be publishing your own debut novel now?
AA: It’s completely surreal to be on the other side now, and I know from experience that there’s so much behind the scenes that go into making a book and putting it on shelves. I’m hugely grateful to my publishers for all of their efforts. I am truly pinching myself daily.
If you were planning a literary dinner party, which three authors (dead or alive) would you invite?
AA: Well as a Canadian, I would probably choose Alice Munro, Carol Shields, and Margaret Atwood, three of the most remarkable women writers from this country—and I would make myself a fly on the wall!
What was the last book you read and loved?
AA: I loved The Harpy by Megan Hunter. It’s about a woman who discovers her husband’s affair, and he agrees to let her hurt him three times in revenge, however she chooses. It manages to feel both other-worldly and completely contemporary, and I loved every last (unsettling!) bit of it.
What do you hope readers will discover in The Push?
AA: I hope readers discover a book that keeps them turning the page, eager to read well past bedtime—because that’s the kind of reading experience I love to have. But most importantly, I hope The Push leaves readers feeling inspired to create space for honest conversations among the women they hold dearest.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
AA: I’m working on the revisions of my second novel, called The Whispers, which I’ve had so much fun writing so far. More to come about it soon!
Thanks Ashley!
AA: It’s been my pleasure, thank you so much.
—The Push by Ashley Audrain (Penguin Books Australia) is out now.
The Push
'The women in this family, we're different . . .' Blythe Connor doesn't want history to repeat itself.
Violet is her first child and she will give her daughter all the love she deserves. All the love that her own mother withheld.But firstborns are never easy. And Violet is demanding and fretful. She never smiles. Soon Blythe believes she can do no right - that something's very wrong. Either with her daughter, or herself.Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining it. But Violet's different with him. And he can't understand what Blythe suffered as a child. No one can....
Comments
May 26, 2021 at 11:57 pm
Terrible. Too wordy and no surprises. Waste of money.