The Whispers

As a product of the suburbs, I am obsessed with “neighborhood novels.” I love everything from the petty bus stop drama to the illicit affairs between pick-up and drop-off—all events that my small town lacked, but that I would secretly imagine happening. The Whispers fits perfectly into this genre, then elevates it with incredibly compelling, well-drawn characters and real-life stakes.

The Whispers begins with a fall. Young Xavier has tumbled out of his bedroom window with seemingly no witnesses, leaving him in a coma with no clear road to recovery. His mother has been recently ostracized from their small community, and this incident has only served to further widen the berth between her and the rest of the neighborhood. Over the course of the novel, we hear from these other locals—a young couple struggling to conceive, an older woman subjected to unimaginable things behind closed doors, mothers straining to do what is good and right. All the while, the dark undercurrent of Xavier’s condition serves as a driving pulse.

If you love a novel with multiple protagonists, let me oh-so-emphatically place this book in your hands. These women are complex—jealous, insecure, well-intentioned in equal measure. Through these different perspectives, Audrain does a brilliant job of exploring the gulf between the version of ourselves we project out into the world and who we truly perceive ourselves to be. The Whispers gives the reader permission to relish this gray area at the same time that it requests our empathy, and for that, I came out of this book feeling just that little bit more human.

The Loverlys sit by the hospital bed of their young son who is in a coma after falling from his bedroom window in the middle of the night; his mother, Whitney, will not speak to anyone. Back home, their friends and neighbors are left in shock, each confronting their own role in the events that led up to what happened that terrible night: the warm, altruistic Parks who are the Loverlys’ best friends; the young, ambitious Goldsmiths who are struggling to start a family of their own; and the quiet, elderly Portuguese couple who care for their adult son with a developmental disability, and who pass the long days on the front porch, watching their neighbors go about their busy lives.

The story spins out over the course of one week, in the alternating voices of the women in each family as they are forced to face the secrets within the walls of their own homes, and the uncomfortable truths that connect them all to one another.

Set against the heart wrenching drama of what will happen to Xavier, who hangs between death and life, or a life changed forever, The Whispers is a novel about what happens when we put our needs ahead of our children’s. Exploring the quiet sacrifices of motherhood, the intuitions that we silence, the complexities of our closest friendships, and the danger of envy, this is a novel about the reverberations of life’s most difficult decisions.