´I was embarassed that we´d created a human being who would act this way´.
As a young, inexperienced, motherloss mother, I´ve spent an unknown amount of time observing. Less my own son but rather the other children: in the playground, by playdates, later on, in the Kindergarten. Personally, I had no idea what to do with children. What children can do. And no matter the amount of parenting books and lectures I´ve read and listened, I was still puzzled by children, their different behaviors, their communication, their aggressivity. If one wants to understand the source of good and evil, a growing up child can offer a lot of food for thought. Think about the tantrums, those organic energies that can fuel the screams of your beloved little one for hours in a row. But a mother will forget everything once her little one will clung to her tired body and will feel asleep in her arms. What about those few, very few children, that I observed in shock, who were just hurting the other, weaker children? Hurting in such a well-planned way that one (wrongly) imagine that only a diabolic adult mind can plan it at such a lengthy detail?
One of the good literary news of the last decade is that there are books completely demystifying motherhood and children in general. Finally, this kind of topics are coming of age and you can understand it in the more direct, realistic way. Mothers do not always have motherhood instincts, fathers can be good parents, children may be evil, and mothers can abandon their children with no regrets. It happens already in real life for a very long time and I am glad the literary realm caught up with reality.
The Push by the Canadian author Ashley Audrain is a perfect read for those looking for more subtelty and intelligent approach to children and mother and motherhood. It is written by a mother, Blythe, a failed author, whose mother left her, wrinting to the father of her daughter Violet, Fox. They used to be a couple and a second child, a little boy Sam, was also part of the family. Until Violet push the pram on the street when the lights were red. No one but her, the mother, believed this story, until she did it again. But it was too late.
Besides the topic which is revolutionary, the construction of the story is refined and very detailed. As a work of architecture presumably created by Fox, the shocking events are suddenly happening after pages of homely calm: days filled with glasses of red wine, and house chores and parenting. Fragments from the past, of the long family line of mothers distant from their children, do explain the mutations of the trauma. Is this the real cause for Violet´s criminal profile? Maybe everything has to do in fact with socially forcing motherhood upon women who don´t want or are not ready yet for having children ?
I personally did not like the Blythe character at all. The kind of wasted kind of person who is giving up her life once having a husband and a child. She not even consider having therapy although she is aware of her traumatic motherhood history in her family. Still, she is a lucid voice and although weak, she is trying to figure out the realities around her. But because her weakness, no one take her seriously.
The Push is a haunting book, cruel and raising doubts about all those pinky given ideas about family life and motherhood and purity of children. It is also well written and I can´t wait to read more by Ashley Audrain.
A special note to the cover which is brainy in its direct simplicity.
Rating: 4.5 stars
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