“There’s something animalistic about the way the middle-aged adults size each other up while feigning friendliness in the backyard of the most expensive house on the street.”  This is the line that had me hooked!  It perfectly exhibits Ashley Audrain’s approach to exploring the inner workings of the female characters in The Whispers. Big picture, The Whispers is about womanhood. It is about the variety of experiences that women have with motherhood and marriage, and the psychology behind them. The Whispers is also, however, a dark thriller taking place in an upper middle-class neighbourhood after a horrible incident occurs to a ten-year-old child.   

The book opens with a neighbourhood barbeque at the Loverly’s house. The Loverly’s are Whitney, her husband Jacob and their three children: ten-year-old Xavier and three-year-old twins. Whitney always looks very put together, is successful in her career and wants to project that image to everyone at her party. Unfortunately, Whitney’s troubled son Xavier triggers her with some childish behaviour and she loses her temper. Screaming at him inside the house, she quickly realizes that the entire party has heard.  Her façade is immediately shattered. 

We then skip ahead nine months to a terrible accident that Xavier has and questions begin to swirl about how it happened and Whitney’s involvement. This may sound like a rather generic thriller but truly it is not. Audrain does an incredible job of capturing the details, complexities, and emotions of motherhood. The story is never just a scandalous look at the goings-on in this neighbourhood, but more a deep dive into what being a woman and mother really entails. 

The book focuses on four female characters and the chapters are presented from their varying perspectives. Along with Whitney, we meet Blair, Whitney’s friend, who has chosen to put her husband and child first and who questions whether she has given up too much of herself. There’s also Rebecca, who is a successful pediatric doctor, but who heartbreakingly has been unable to carry her own child to term at this point. (The discussion of miscarriage is very raw here but such a crucial topic to explore.) Mara is the fourth character and is on the other end of the spectrum from these women as she is in her senior years. Having immigrated from Portugal decades earlier, she now lives on the street like a fly on the wall. Sitting daily on her porch, she is invisible to her busy neighbours but very aware of all of their circumstances. In seeing through the eyes of these women, we learn that it is indeed extremely difficult to have it all, marriage, children and a career… it seems something always must give, and at different times.  

The Whispers is a fascinating portrait of the choices women make and the emotions they often sit with.  It also reminds us that how we see ourselves can be very different from our external image. This is a book that will stick with you and leave you pondering different moral dilemmas long after the fact.  Personally, I just can’t shake it. Since Audrain’s first novel, The Push, another psychological family drama, was a New York Times bestseller and The Whispers is already at the top of The Globe and Mail bestseller list, I imagine that there will be more great writing to come from Audrain. I can’t wait to see whose shoes we step into next!