We welcome Ashley Audrain, author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Push, which tells the story of a woman who is determined to be a different mother than the ones that came before her. But once her daughter is born she quickly realizes something is wrong with her and an incident in the family forces her to look at who her daughter is and who she really is, all while her family unravels. The Push is a psychological suspense tale and a dark exploration of motherhood wrapped in one!

** We start by discussing Blythe, her complicated heroine, and why she wanted to challenge the trope that there was only the “bad mother” or the “perfect mother.” Like Bylthe, we all live somewhere in the gray area. (01:51)

** This is not just Blythe’s story...The Push is a multi-generational story that weaves in scenes of her mother Cecilia and her grandmother Etta. Ashley shares why she wanted to explore how much we inherit from the women we came from and how inescapable that is. (04:54)

** The Push explores the expectations society puts on women to be mothers and then to be a certain kind of mother. We open up about feelings of maternal ambivalence, resentment, and shame that sometimes mothers are afraid to express. (10:30)

**  Society teaches us what motherhood should look like and feel like and when it doesn’t it feels isolating. We talk about the lack of honest dialogue around being a  mother - what it is like when you’re actually in it. The Push is the Gone Girl of motherhood in our view in that it is a razor sharp look at motherhood. Ashely shares that only in fiction can we get at the real truth. (14:50)

** Violet, who we only see her from baby to age 12, is such a complex and unsettling character. We talk about the courage it took Ashley to make a child a villain and how heightened the mother daughter relationship is. (20:55)

** Spoiler alert -- we talk about Blythe’s husband, Fox, and how parenthood changes a relationship. (25:36).

** Spoiler alert -- we can’t NOT talk about that ending and what we are truly supposed to believe about Blythe and Violet’s story. (30:17)

** Ashley shares her meteoric path to publication, from landing her dream agent to the staggering speed with which her debut novel sold to publishers. (33:59).

** Hollywood immediately came calling too, with the film rights being sold after a nine-way auction to David Heyman! Ashley shares the wild ride this has been and what role she will have in the adaptation. (38:19)

** Of course we discuss astrology with Ashley, a “textbook Taurus,” and she opens up about an uncanny meeting she had with a psychic! Our minds were blown! (41:04)

** Ashley shares what she is loving in terms of books, podcasts, movies and TV shows. (45:27)

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