Cover image from Google.com

Trigger warning: Child death, suicide

This novel is about motherhood, nature vs nurture, and generational trauma.

Told mostly from Blythe’s perspective – in second person no less! – we learn about how she never really wanted to be a mother, but chose to anyway. Her husband, Fox, put pressure on her to expand their family and since the marriage was going so well, she thought parenting would be fine.

Except that her mother left her when she was thirteen, and her grandmother took her own life when her mother was young. Neither woman wanted to be a mother, yet became pregnant anyway. They both tried to parent, to the best of their ability, but failed in the role.

Now Blythe has a daughter, a daughter that wants nothing to do with her pretty much since birth. When this girl, Violet, orchestrates the death of a toddler at a park, everyone thinks it was an accident. I mean, who would think a little girl could trip a toddler, coldly and deliberately, and cause his death? The relationship between Blythe and Violet remains strained and Fox brushes away all Blythe’s concerns, saying that Blythe simply needs to do better.

When Blythe becomes pregnant again, she has a son, Sam, that she loves dearly. All the love she should have felt for Violet is found in her relationship with Sam.

Until Violet pushes Sam’s stroller into traffic.

Again, nobody believes a little girl could do this. It was an accident, nothing more.

The marriage breaks up and Blythe tries to be a good mother to Violet, but the rift is too big to repair. Fox has moved on and has had another child with a new woman. Blythe worries that Violet will hurt this new child, but the mother brushes off concern, just like Fox did.

The novel is well written. Second person is remarkably hard but the author pulls it off beautifully. The strained parenting relationships are contrasted by a kind mother down the block, Mrs. Ellignton, taking Blythe under her wing when her mother leaves. While reading, the question of an unreliable narrator remained. Was Blythe really seeing Violet as a coldhearted person capable of murder? Or was Blythe seeing things that weren’t there? The final line of the novel answers those questions well enough.

It’s a good read, riveting in its horror, but definitely not for everyone.