After the enormous success of The Push, the Canadian author presents her second novel. An article by Erika Patruno
The book presentations continue to roll out at the Rizzoli Bookshop inside Milan’s famous Galleria Vittoria Emanuele. First up yesterday was Canadian author Ashley Audrain, whose new novel The Whispers ushers us into a new dimension of the noir genre.
A thriller about emotions, yet above all a thriller about women, in which the arguably odd couple of feminism and motherhood creates a gripping plot that prompts readers to think hard about a woman’s identity as a mother and an individual in a society focused on performance.
“Writing about women and motherhood is a deep need of mine, almost an obsession,” the author ventures to say as she first answers questions from Isabella Fava.
The Whispers, in fact, brilliantly depicts every facet of motherhood. The four main characters of the novel represent all the iterations of being a mother, including the joys and sorrows associated with it.
“As strange as this sounds, reality can be described better in fiction,” Audrain declares, and this is why the author chose the stylistic features of the noir genre for her second novel, after The Push. “Readers shouldn’t be able to put this book down,” she confesses.
The presentation comes to a close on an intriguing, if bittersweet, note, as the writer shares her own fears as a mother. “After all,” she says, “love is also about being afraid.”
