I think Carole Hailey is a fresh new voice and I will definitely look forward to anything else she writes. Thirteen and hitting puberty is a time when girls really need their mums and the pyjama scene and the baked beans of lies scene had me raging at the cruelty of Rachel. As a mum of two girls and being a daughter who is close to my mum I couldn’t imagine anything being a good enough reason for what she was doing. Wow! A book that could almost be described as dystopian because of the picture it paints of the world, and it is a world that seems to be within touching distance of our world now - which is what makes it chilling. And as for the beginning - a prologue that describes our 'voice' - Emilia, watching her mother set herself alight and burn to death. What follows is Emilia writing a book that will explain who her mother actually was. I can not even put into words how real this felt for me. Like numerous times, I was researching and looking on good ole Google to see if it actually happened. I am so blown away by how this book made me feel. The book opens with Emilia setting out to publish her mother’s notebooks and in doing so to emerge from that all-pervading legacy, to set down her own voice.

Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo called The Silence Project“engrossing and original, political and unpredictable… [a book that] will get people talking,”. That’s a tantalising blurb, so I was thrilled when Corvus Books (via Allen & Unwin) sent me a copy for review. I will warn you that the description at the start is pretty graphic and harrowing. It certainly set the scene and captured my attention though. Overall, The Silence Project is an interesting concept but it wasn’t fleshed out in the right places for me and I found it hard to engage with the writing style and the characters. Thank you to NetGalley & Atlantic Books – Corvus for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

the highest aspirations of humanity, and to provide a forum for global concerns’. Allan’s experiences at the Rothko Chapel are recorded The Silence Project is styled as Emilia’s account of her mother’s silent protest, and the fall-out. It’s a kind of alternate history in two halves – a biography of Rachel up to the Event, and an exposé of the Community afterward. The second part is where we along with Emilia Morris get to understand the community built by Rachel in depth along with other side characters. However, the book seems a little bit stretched to me another thing was me not being able to resonate with many things Rachel as a mother did in this book.

This was an incredibly unique book. Rachel decided on her daughters’ thirteenth birthday, she will commit herself to silence and live as unencumbered a life as possible, choosing the bottom of the garden as her peaceful escape. I absolutely love the premise, and the fact that the author chose the daughter of Rachel to narrate the story and explore a relationship that is incredibly difficult to the one that the rest of the world eventually has with Rachel. When Em's mother decides to live at the end of the garden in a tent and to not speak she thinks that this will pass; just a phase of her Mother. However, as news of her mothers silence becomes common knowledge no one can expect the tragic outcome. Countless people who never met her claim to understand who Rachel was. She was a demon. A heroine. The most important person to have lived. A saint. A devil. I think the biggest aspect that didn’t work for me was how I couldn’t connect with the protagonist. A major chunk of the book seemed stretchy, making me want to skip a few chapters. In spite of a solid plot, I felt myself losing interest ever so often.With other women joining in and starting the community the term cult sprang to mind. The consequences of this turn malevolent and any good intentions that Rachel may have originally had were soon lost.

I think the story behind this book is incredibly powerful. While I've read a lot of books about cults, this one was quite unique in its approach and extremely convincing. Where it fell down, I felt, was in the decision to write the book as Emilia's biography of her mother. This format made the book dry at times, and dragged out parts of the story, especially in the middle. I've always found cults pretty fascinating, especially how people get drawn into them, and I think this book really captures how they are formed, and at times it did feel pretty true. When she publishes her own account of her mother’s life in a memoir called The Silence Project, Emilia also decides to reveal just how sinister the Community has become. In the process, she steps out of Rachel’s shadow once and for all, so that her own voice may finally be heard.

This was the story I was expecting, and it fully delivered. I’ve read several books this year that lay out the frustrations of people (usually women) who have grown up in the long cold shadow of a famous and subsequently neglectful parent — and I won’t lie, I enjoy them immensely. It’s a literary kink I didn’t know I had! And Emilia’s narrative rings so true, filled with frustration mixed with the emotional maturity of adulthood’s hindsight. Emilia is a massively sympathetic character in this portion of the narrative, and my heart really ached for her. OK, stop whatever you are doing, go online or head to your nearest bookshop and buy this book, do it, don’t think about it…just go and get a copy. I will be recommending this novel to everyone in the world; I will be exulting and extolling its consummate brilliance to anyone who will listen to a bold, bouncy, bookish former librarian…it is a masterpiece of literature, I can’t even bring myself to label it, some will undoubtly call it feminist or dystopian, but those monikers are just too narrow for the incredible scope, depth, content, and quality of this story. Personally, I think it is literary genius personified. Carole where have you been all my reading life, you are AMAZING, and your imagination and knowledge of social political & historical environs is incredible! If anyone thinks I am fan girling in this review…excuse me when I say… Hell Yes, I am…. Carole and her novel, deserve every iota of praise, I can give them! As Emilia's story grows, Rachel's stability lessens. The community increases - worldwide as well as a massive amount of women in their little town. I was excited to start The Silence Project as dystopian thrillers are some of my favourite genres of books. The plot follows the story of Emilia Morris: whose mother started a community of silence at the bottom of her garden when she was 13. When her mother and her followers burn themselves to death to try and inspire the world to listen, a worldwide phenomenon was born. But is this organisation following in the footsteps her mother created or is there a darker force at play? I found it very hard to believe that this story is a novel. It is so realistic that I kept googling facts to see if they were really true. Some of the facts are indeed true such as the story of Sadako and the thousand paper cranes.