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The Push
The Push
Ashley Audrain | 2021 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry, Thriller
10
8.3 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
The protagonist in this book is a nameless woman, a daughter, a wife, a mother, and this story is told from her perspective, kind of. The woman is telling us her life story: how she met her husband, about her pregnancy and her troubles with her daughter Violet, and other events that traumatise her for life. The characters in this book are quite disturbed, intense and very complex. For some strange reason, I could really relate to the protagonist. I understood her and her thoughts resonated with mine sometimes.

At the beginning of the book, I was not very impressed, I had no idea what it was about. But the more I got into it, the more absorbed I became. The narrative has several different lines and is telling the story of women from three generations. The protagonist is sharing the deepest and scariest thoughts of her life, and it got very intense for me sometimes. I really enjoyed the suspense, turns and twists. The topics discussed in this book are marriage, pregnancies, lack of motherhood instinct, mother-daughter relationship, children behavioural issues, grief, depression, trauma and many more.

The book is set somewhere American sounding (might be Canada), the atmosphere of this book is pretty dark and shrouded with mystery. I really liked the writing style of this novel, it is very honest, detailed and the mystery was kept perfectly. The chapters are pretty short, so this book was a true page-turner for me. I really loved the ending, because I was pretty confused with some stuff happening in the book, but the ending kind of clarified it for me. I have to throw in a warning, that this book has triggers when it comes to pregnancies, cheating, death of children, grief, psychotic behaviour.

So, to conclude, this book is a very intense life story, filled with very well crafted characters, that are intriguing, absorbing and the plot that is layered, complex and brutally honest.
  
My Life As A Rat
My Life As A Rat
Joyce Carol Oates | 2019 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
7
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
218 of 230
Book
My life as a Rat
By Joyce Carol Oates
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Which should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one’s family ever justified? Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it?

My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age twelve, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.

This was one of those books that just had you shocked to the core from the start. It’s raw and hard to read in parts. It’s well written and up until the last quarter I was enjoying it but it just got a bit tedious. This does have a few triggers for abuse and racism! Overall it’s a good read.