The Hush by Sara Foster
“If you want to stand up and be counted, the time is now. Don’t wait any longer because we’re heading back into the dark ages. Your heads are being turned towards the daily horror, but look beyond it please, if only for a moment, and try to see what’s happening to the freedoms you take for granted.”
The Hush (2021) is Australian favourite Sara Foster’s latest novel. The author of six other tense, psychological books, her latest will not leave fans disappointed. For those new to Foster, it’s a fantastic, suspenseful and frighteningly relevant read.
Set in post-COVID era Britain, the country and its citizens are struggling to recover from the social and economic crisis of the virus amidst escalating climate concerns, including rising sea levels and floods.
The lingering impact of COVID-19 has the nation intensely checking for symptoms. Everyone is subject to daily screenings and health checks via checkpoints, manned by eerily life-like AI robots and smartwatches. Regulations around the watches have recently been increased, with citizens instructed they must wear them at all times - including when asleep. The watches track heart rates, temperatures, location and it’s believed they’re recording all conversations.
The country is also grappling with another horrifying crisis. Maternity wards are battling what has been dubbed Intrapartum X: babies are dying shortly after birth, and no one knows why. Also referred to as “doll babies,” the newborns appear fine and healthy in their mother’s womb, only to be born refusing to breathe:
“It doesn’t matter how quickly a neonate is plucked from the womb, if it’s an Intrapartum X baby it will go limp the moment it’s touched. The babies demonstrate no signs of pain and no will to stay in the world. They are pristine human specimens.
They just won’t breathe.”
Seventeen-year-old Lainey is in her final year of school. Her main concerns evolve around fending off advances from the school bully, Liam, the compulsory community service combatting the floods she’ll have to do after her exams, and keeping the three baby chicks she’s rescued alive.
And then she discovers she’s pregnant.
Amid escalating conspiracy theories around why babies are dying, pregnant teenagers are going missing, including a girl from Lainey’s school, and no one knows where they are. After a risky theft of a pregnancy test at the local pharmacy, helped by her best friend Sereena, Lainey’s troubles are only just beginning.
With abortions now illegal, Lainey must keep her pregnancy a secret until she can decide what to do, but the walls are closing in fast - especially when the pharmacist turns up at her school and identifies Sereena.
Lainey, her midwife mother Emma, her estranged grandmother Geraldine, and a cast of empowering female characters must race against the clock to uncover dark political cover-ups, coercive regimes and murder before it’s too late for Lainey and every teenage girl like her.
The Hush has everything a reader could want from a feminist psychological thriller; a fast-paced narrative, a seemingly impossible situation, danger, intrigue, an assassination plot, a thwarted escape, a secret society of spies, straight-talking feminists, clear-cut patriarchal bad guys … Foster has packed it all in, and it works!
Each chapter is broken down by day and time-stamped, adding to the sense of urgency and building a foreboding picture of just how quickly things can move when you’re battling oppressive forces. The characterisation is on point, and I found Lainey’s mother, Emma, an exceptionally well-written and believable second narrator.
Threaded through all the thrills and danger is the constant, unwavering love between mothers and daughters, how they become untangled and what it takes to see mothers for the human beings they are:
“Lainey doesn’t understand why sometimes, when they sit across from one another eating meals and making idle conversation, Lainey wants to lean over and shout in her mother’s face. She’s not sure what she wants to say or what she’s looking for. A reaction? An acknowledgement that Emma is capable of recognising the tumult of feelings that maraud through Lainey?”
Foster has strategically written a novel that is at once dystopian and yet very much grounded in global realities. There’s vital commentary here on the continued policing and ownership of female bodies under escalating, authoritarian-charged political agendas. Foster also touches on the interconnectedness of our actions on this planet, climate change and the ways will have to adapt to survive - or not.
The Hush will have you reading with bated breath as plots thicken and whooping with elation as Lainey and Emma come together to fight for the rights of women everywhere.
The Hush is released in Australia on 27 October 2021 through HarperCollins Australia.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in nipaluna (Hobart), Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under www.wordswithelaine.com.
