The Silence by Susan Allott

The Silence by Susan Allott.

Published 30th April 2020 by The Borough Press in ebook format. The hardback will be published in August 2020.
Read April 2020.

London, 1997: Isla is awakened in the middle of the night by a call from her father Joe, in Sydney.

The police have reason to believe that Joe is the last person to have seen their next door neighbour Mandy, who disappeared thirty years ago. It was thought that Mandy had moved house with her husband Steve, as they tried to revive their troubled marriage, but it now seems no one has seen her since the day she left, and this puts Joe under suspicion of murder.

Isla knows she must reluctantly return to Sydney, for the first time in many years, to try to help her father prove his innocence, but once she is there, she is flooded with memories of Mandy, the kindly woman who used to look after her as a child. Other, less pleasant memories bubble to the surface too, as the strained relationship between her parents causes Isla to confront the truth about her parents and her own shortcomings.

As Isla delves into the past, she discovers that there are long buried secrets about the relationship between her parents and the couple next door. What really happened between Mandy, Steve and her own parents, and how is this related to the conspiracy of silence that surrounds the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families?

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What an absolute cracker of a debut novel! In turns, The Silence, is an outstanding domestic drama full of raw emotion, about the consequences that arise when there are secrets between partners; a tense and beautifully paced murder-mystery cum thriller, full of suspense; and a fascinating historical fiction work that brings to light the terrible truth about a shockingly arrogant social policy that had tragic consequences.

The Silence follows a dual timeline format that takes the reader back and forth between the scorching summer of 1967, and the stormy days of a 1997 autumn. 

The 1967 storyline sees Joe and his pregnant wife,  Louisa, having apparently insurmountable marital problems, which they are trying to keep away from their young daughter, Isla. Both Joe and Louisa are from England, and although Joe loves the Australian way of life, Louisa is miserable and lonely - her only friend is her next door neighbour Mandy, who she confides in about her unhappiness and desire to return to England. Joe adores Isla, but seems bewildered by his wife's attitude, and thinks her ungrateful - it doesn't help their relationship any that he is a heavy drinker, a habit he seems to have inherited from his alcoholic father....a habit that is prone to unleash his temper and his fists.

Meanwhile, Mandy is having relationship problems of her own. Her husband Steve is a policeman, who has been given the task of removing Aboriginal children from their homes and placing them in foster care or bleak children's homes. Steve desperately wants a child of his own and believes Mandy would like the same, but she is not so sure, and is convinced she is not cut our for motherhood - like her own mother. Mandy feels herself falling out of love with Steve, lying about trying for a baby, and becoming more and more frustrated with her life. She is doing her best to ignore that Steve's job is becoming increasingly difficult for him to carry out and breaking him up inside.

Things come to a head when Louisa empties the joint savings account Joe has been building up to buy a car, and takes Isla back to England, leaving Joe a note which simply says "Sorry..". Joe is desperate and drinking heavily, Mandy is unhappy and feels sorry for Joe - and the inevitable affair ensues.

The 1997 strand of our story, finds Isla back in her childhood home in Sydney, after an absence of ten years. She knows her father is a person of interest in the mysterious disappearance of Mandy thirty years ago - a woman she remembers as being kind and generous - who seems to have disappeared during the time she and her mother were back in England. She also remembers that she and the other local children were always afraid that the unstable Steve would take them away in his truck - a part of the past that is brought into clear focus by the current political climate in the Australia she has returned to.

Isla remembers little about the few months she and her mother were in England, other than that she hated it and wanted nothing more than to return to Sydney. She only knows that her mother did not leave again, even tough the relationship between her parents continued to be a volatile one. Isla is convinced that her father had nothing to do with Mandy's disappearance, but her mother clearly thinks otherwise. As Isla starts to dig into the past, and secrets that have been long buried come to light, she is not so sure about her father. Could he really have done what her mother believes him more than capable of?

Isla is struggling with demons of her own. Unlike her younger brother, she has inherited her father's penchant for alcohol, which has caused her life to get terribly out of control. Her relationship has fallen apart because of her drinking and tendency to resort to violence, just like the father she idolised. But she has been on the wagon for some months now, determined to make a positive change. Isla will not rest until she knows the truth - something that she and the local police appear to have differing ideas about.

This story is wonderfully involved, with deliciously complex characters. It seems like everyone here has something in their life that they are not proud of, secrets they are keen to hide. There are two sides to every story and this comes across so well in our cast of players. I really enjoyed the skillful way Susan Allott achieved this, playing out the tension of the murder mystery alongside the ups and downs of the human relationships - characters driven to breaking point by very real situations - although it is hard to justify some of the actions our characters resort to.

In addition, Susan Allott calls attention to how the balance of power has shifted somewhat between men and women in the way the relationships change between the characters over time - something which ultimately has a crucial outcome on the outcome of the investigation into the disappearance of Mandy. Things have changed over the thirty years between 1967 and 1997, and our author handles this with a deft touch.

I was also very impressed with the way our author turns one of the more cliched tropes on its head in this book, by exploring the idea that the alcoholic/violent strain does not necessarily have to pass down the male line of a family. Instead, although Joe has certainly inherited his volatile and addictive ways from his father, it is his daughter who has been fated to continue in this vein rather than his son - moreover, a son who sees his father for what he is and despises him for it. I found this rather refreshing.

Although this is a story about how lies and secrets in relationships can lead to tragic outcomes, the most shocking part of Susan Allott's incredible book is the way she brings to light the factual story of the Aboriginal children removed by force from their parents - the Stolen Generations. No one knows how may children were removed from their homes, but official government estimates put the figure at anything between one in three and one in ten indigenous children having been forcibly taken from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970. To say this is abominable is to put it mildly, but it becomes even worse when you consider where the children were taken and the tragedy of the abuse they experienced as a result. This is something I knew nothing about until reading this book. 

Interestingly, Susan Allott makes a good case for British school children to learn a lot more about Australian history than they currently do, and I have to agree with her there - especially after recently reading Alison Booth's fabulous book The Philosopher's Daughters, which also highlights some pretty despicable goings on in Australia's past.

Wonderful title too....The Silence....the heavy silence between people, full of secrets....the weight of  a silence intended to cover up for past misdeeds....a conspiracy of silence. Outstanding!

You can't fail to have gathered by now that I found this book pretty impressive, especially for a debut, and I can't wait to see what Susan Allott produces next. Highly recommended!

The Silence is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer!

Thank you to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

From the cover of the book:

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.

30 years ago, in the suffocating heat of summer 1967, the Greens’ 

next-door neighbour Mandy disappeared. 

At the time, it was thought she had 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. 

Reluctantly, Isla goes back to Australia for the first time in a decade. 

The return to Sydney will plunge her 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 this 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? 

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?

Deftly exploring the deterioration of relationships 

and the devastating truths we keep from those we love, 

The Silence is a stunning debut from a rising literary star.

About the author:

Susan Allott is from the UK but spent part of her twenties in Australia, desperately homesick, but trying to make Sydney her home. 

In 2016 she completed the Faber Academy course, during which she started writing this novel. 

She now lives in south London with her two children and her very Australian husband.