Review: The Hush, Sara Foster

Perth-based Sara Foster is a well established writer of Australian psychological suspense novels, and in her latest offering she takes her strengths with pace and plot and takes them for the first time into the territory of science fiction.

The Hush (2021) is set in the UK, in the not-too-distant future following the pandemic, where an increasing proportion of babies are being born perfectly beautiful and healthy -- apart from never taking their first breath. These stillborn "dolls", born at a rate now increasing to almost one in two births – have further frightened a populace already compliant with health surveillance technologies, and already traumatised from the effects of climate change world leaders failed to prevent and are now scrambling to mitigate.

The government takes advantage of the fear to tighten control over its citizens, including through watches they're no longer supposed to remove, originally meant to monitor their health but increasingly suspected of monitoring much more. And now, pregnant teenage girls seem to be disappearing. This situation is all too personal for Emma, a midwife at a public hospital, and her teenage daughter Lainey, who is carrying a secret that promises to get them both into deep trouble.

This novel is notable for its cracking pace, the inventiveness yet chilling plausibility of its premise and the evidence of meticulous research. If you enjoy sci-fi and thrillers for their ability to make you think, 'what if'? and 'what would I...?' then this does both. If you like them for their escapism value and sheer unreality, however, you might find that this one flies too close to the bone – Foster has spoken about the strangeness of writing and researching a sci-fi novel and finding as she went along that fiction was getting a little too close to reality.

A solid, smart page-turner recommended for fans of Sophie Hannah's domestic thrillers, Jodi Picoult's novels, and lovers of dystopian fiction with a feminist twist (there's a distinct Handmaid's Tale vibe).

Also – the very cool cover design by Darren Holt has been longlisted for best commercial fiction cover at the 70th Australian Book Design Awards!