“The Push” by Ashley Audrain (post 1): Narrator-Protagonist Blythe Connor says, “A part of me knew…,” which suggests an alternate personality

In the first quarter of this novel, there are no good guys among the main characters. The narrator, Blythe Connor (a name which might connote a woman who happily cons people) (the back flap says the author’s background is in publicity) addresses her former husband, Fox Connor (a clever con man?).

Most reviews discuss the novel as being about motherhood and problem children (Violet, here). And Blythe adds emphasis by repeatedly giving flashbacks to her horrible mother and grandmother, and her own abused childhood. But no woman is single, so men are partly responsible for everything horrible that happens.

Blythe is an aspiring fiction writer, but how she got into writing and what she writes about in her fiction have not been mentioned. The story is focused on her horrible motherhood, which has run in her family.

So far, inside the novel, I have come across only one inadvertent suggestion of multiple personality. Blythe says, “A part of me knew…” (1, p. 33). Persons with undiagnosed multiple personality may think of themselves as having “parts” that know things.

The cover (2) of the novel features an inkblot (as in The Rorschach test) of a woman split in two, back to back (at least, that’s what it looks like to me). I don’t know who was responsible for this cover or what they had in mind. It could be either a generic reference to psychological problems or a specific reference to multiple personality. In addition, the letters of the title have splits. And so do the letters of the author’s name. In short, intentionally or inadvertently, the cover suggests a split personality.

1. Ashley Audrain. The Push. Pamela Dorman/Viking/Penguin Random House, 2021.

2. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/625327/the-push-by-ashley-audrain/