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Content snapshot
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Violence
A lot
Violence involving children — depicted with disturbing precision
Language
Some
Adult language in Audrain's psychological thriller register
Sexual Content
Barely any
Minimal sexual content
Substance Use
Barely any
Some social drinking
Emotional Intensity
Very heavy
Extreme psychological horror — the question of whether you can love your child, and whether the child is capable of love — creates one of the most unsettling reading experiences in recent literary fiction
What this book is about
Ashley Audrain's debut novel follows Blythe, whose deep ambivalence about motherhood becomes terror when her daughter Violet seems fundamentally wrong — violent in ways that babies should not be. The novel asks whether bad mothering creates bad children, or whether evil can be innate. Audrain writes psychological thriller with genuine menace; the violence involving children is disturbing and the narrative is expertly unreliable. For adult readers only.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Violence involving children
Extreme psychological horror throughout
Reader Verification
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