The Silence
Fiction
William Morrow
May 19, 2020
Hardcover
304
Free from publisher
It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney, Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father phoning from Sydney. Thirty years ago, in the suffocating heat of summer 1967, the Green's next-door neighbor Mandy disappeared. At the time, it was thought she fled a broken marriage and gone to start a new life; but now Mandy's family is trying to reconnect, and there is no trace of her. Isla's father Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive, and now he's under suspicion of murder.
Isla unwillingly plans to go back to Australia for the first time in a decade to support her father. The return to Sydney will plunge Isla deep into the past, to a quiet street by the sea where two couples live side by side. Isla's parents, Louisa and Joe, have recently emigrated from England - a move that has left Louisa miserably homesick while Joe embraces his new life. Next door, Steve and Mandy are equally troubled. Mandy doesn't want a baby, even though Steve - a cop trying to hold it together under the pressures of the job - is desperate to become a father.
The more Isla asks about the past, the more she learns: about both young couples and the secrets each marriage bore. Could her father be capable of doing something terrible? How much does her mother know? What will happen to their family if Isla's worst fears are realized? And is there another secret in this community, one which goes deeper into Australia's colonial past, which has held them in a conspiracy of silence?
My review:
The kind of mystery I'm drawn to, where there is a slow burn until you reach the ultimate answer, did Isla's father kill his next door neighbor thirty years ago? I liked the way this one was set up, with chapters alternating between the present story (with Isla trying to piece together what happened when she was just a small girl), and thirty years prior where we learn just what was going on in these neighbors' lives. The super short chapters kept me flying through them to figure out what could have happened. All of these characters certainly had flaws, which just added to the suspense of how it would all play out. There were some interesting facts thrown in about the displacement of Aboriginal children from their homes, and we had plenty of other people behaving badly to boot. While I did have a suspect in mind, it took until the very end of the book to find out if I was even remotely close, and I did waver several times on whether to change my mind.
A fast read, this is a really entertaining who-dunnit taking place in Australia, with some not so likable characters and a daughter just after the truth.
I love a slow burning mystery, so I'm sure I would enjoy this one! The alternating chapters from different times seems to be such a popular device these days.
It is a popular device. Most times it works for me, but there is the occasion when it doesn't. Thanks for stopping by!