num_pages: 304
description: Combining the emotional power and dual narrative style of Before We Were Yours with the nuanced layered and atmospheric mystery of The Dry a powerful debut novel revolving around a shocking disappearance two neighbor families and shameful secrets from the past that refuse to stay buried. 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 fled a broken marriage and gone to start a new life; but now Mandys family is trying to reconnect and there is no trace of her. Islas father Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive and now hes 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. Islas parents Louisa and Joe have recently emigrated from Englanda move that has left Louisa miserably homesick while Joe embraces this new life. Next door Steve and Mandy are equally troubled. Mandy doesnt want a baby even though Stevea cop trying to hold it together under the pressures of the jobis 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 Islas worst fears are realized? And is there another secret in this community one which goes deeper into Australias 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 promising literary star.
language: None
title: The Silence
publisher: William Morrow