“It’s better to lift her chin and quietly face whatever hour is ahead of her. And the next hour after that, lest anyone suspect she’s this miserable. It’s beneficial for everyone, she knows, if the indifference takes over.”

Blair believes that it’s best for all—including herself—if she simply accepts what she takes to be her life’s hopelessness and insignificance. She is only 40 but feels there is no possibility left, and this feeling is a consequence of her sense of inadequacy and smallness. For Blair, it is easier to feel nothing than to feel badly.

“She’d once heard them described as the whispers—the moments that are trying to tell you something isn’t right here. The problem is that some women aren’t listening to what their lives are trying to tell them. They don’t hear the whispers until they’re looking back with hindsight.”

This line introduces the motif that gives the novel its title; it also ominously foreshadows Blair’s life. She hears the “whispers” her intuition offers about her husband, and she knows that many women fail to listen to those whispers. Nevertheless, she goes on to ignore the whispers herself, leading to a sham of a marriage and perhaps further disillusionment down the road.

“Now she cannot reconcile the love she has for her daughter with how confined she feels by the privilege of being her mother. These are the feelings she hates herself for having. These are the things she’ll never say aloud to anyone.”

These lines reflect Blair’s ambivalence toward motherhood—a feeling she hides because it does not align with society’s expectation that a mother feel totally fulfilled by her children. Blair feels stuck in many ways, not the least of which involves the Sacrifices of Motherhood that society and her own conscience demand.