The Silence Project

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Through premise of Emilia writing her book, we follow her almost documentary style retrospection and all varying elements that occur and there is so much to absorb; from the Shh logo, to the Shellie’s; to a mob of angry men (the 52 as they become known) invading the camp; to a series of highly public protests/publicity stunts (the Airport protest of 2008, involving ear shaped balloons) and how the community starts as a group of women in tents and huts around campfires at the bottom of pub garden seeking solidarity and to be heard in an ever increasingly careless world into an media savvy and sleek, profitable mega group; with visions and resources to improve everyone’s future in a positive way: well that’s the line, they’re spinning!… Emilia grows up within the parameters of this environment, but things change and that is my simple lead up, to describing what happens next after ‘The Event’ of 31st Oct 2011…which are, I think mind blowing but I am not giving you any in depth details here…those are for you to discover when you read it. I really enjoyed the descriptions of Emilia's contrasting experiences in the DRC as well. From still wrangling with her relationship with her mother and the Community, to violence and protests, exploring beautiful nature and falling in love. The description of the gorillas made me want to visit the DRC. Hailey writes in a way that continually negotiates and challenges our perceptions and boundaries: between protest and responsibility, silence and voice, listening and hearing, the particular and the universal. In her novel, ‘Spring, Ali Smith writes of boundaries not as places where two places separate, but as where two points meet and meld, and this resonates here. Rachel is many Rachels. Atlantic Books acquires a revealing new history that uncovers the life of a powerful and charismatic Ancient Roman woman

of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, ‘ a sacred space open to all… to inspire people to action through art and contemplation, to nurture reverence for Whatever the nature of the cause the internet, like the very act of protest itself, galvanises as much as it polarises, and both regularly take on radical centrifugal momentums of their own. The exponential nature of this is well charted and portrayed here, and apportioning of responsibility depends on the moral question of where does Rachel as the founder end and the community begin, or are they the one and same? Works by Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir & Ólafur Kolbeinn Guðmundsson, Mia Hamari, and Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Photo: Gallen-Kallela Museum I really loved how it was Rachel's daughter that narrated the story and how brutally honest she was about her part within the community when she worked there. I felt I could really connect with her and empathised with her when she told us how ashamed she was. I cant even imagine how hard that work be living under her mother's shadow, her legacy and seeing what the community did but saying it was all because of Rachel. The only 'guidelines' they and Emilia have at all of what Rachel wanted to achieve are in Rachel's diaries, which are to be released for publication and for people to interpret what they will.

A few months ago, I read a truly excellent sample kindly sent to me by Corvus, and it turned out to be a book that was right up my street. I love the concept of the Very British Cult (The Rapture by Claire McGlasson is a fine example), and The Silence Project takes this and combines it with feminist politics along the lines of such greats as The Power by Naomi Alderman or Vox by Christina Dalcher. Emilia is celebrating her 13th birthday at her dad’s pub when she hears her mother’s voice for the last time. After that day, her mother moves to the land outside, stops speaking, and communicates by notes. The world needs to listen more than to speak. Over time, other women join her, a community builds, political acts are staged. Emilia writes about these times and how they built to the act that was felt the world over, The Event, and what has led to her writing this memoir/exposé/personal revelation a decade later.

Reading this made me think about the effect a dominant personality can have on the people around them. Rachel is one of those people, and her aims have far-reaching consequences for her daughter, her husband and countless others around the world. Like many people Rachel is concerned about the environment and overpopulation. She knows that politicians like the sound of their own voices and rarely listen to the people. Planning to buy The Silence Project for your group? Buy books from Hive or from Bookshop.org and support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no extra cost to you.The book is Emilia’s story. She is writing about her mother while trying to make sense of her own life and to make amends for her mistakes. I enjoyed this one a lot, it comes across as being a possibility in a world that is full of negativity at the moment and I can understand the thought behind the positivity and hope that the author expresses through her silent character. The role of the daughter being caught up in her mum's actions is given in a very convincing way and this made it a very readable story. What began as a Greenham Common like protest has snowballed into the Community, a powerful global movement with influence and reach in every sphere of public and private life. The line between cult and culture is opaque even if the Community’s exclusively sinister message is ruthlessly clear: ‘those who are not with us are against us’. The book focuses on an almost cult-like group, the Silence Community, launched by the narrator’s mother, Rachel Morris, and their subsequent political ambitions. For me, this half of the book was like a literary pass the parcel of idea explosions; nothing you or I could expect or can/could see coming develops, but I realised that in fact it’s all about perspectives and Carole has honed them, so they are razor sharp in their inception and so divinely subtle, its almost with hindsight I realised all the clues are/were in front of me, plus there are some more positives in Emilia’s life to uncover. See, I said this novel is a work of total genius…now I’m not giving much away about the second part of the novel, purely because I believe that the impact and elements of this story, need to be revealed as you read it and it will leave you open mouthed at the persuasive and pervasive plans of the Community and the almost benign way it moves to more and more radical concepts and the putrefaction of Rachel’s original beliefs, that being silent allows us to listen and hear more, instead, this becomes a twisted ideology and Emilia feels that breaking her own silence is the only way to combat the poison.

In a fire, you die long before your bones ignite. Skin burns at 40°C. Above 760°C, skin turns to ash. Bones are less flammable because they need to be exposed to 1200°C to burn, although long before that the layer of fat which you carry under your skin will boil. Your internal organs will explode. You will be dead even though your skeleton remains intact. This is an exceptional book. I was intrigued by the blurb and hooked after the first chapter. Initially the protagonists mum Rachel comes across as uncaring and not empathic. We see her cruelly joking with her daughter about the identity of her biological father, gorging herself on stories of large-scale human tragedies, and demanding her family runs around after her when she retreats in silence to her tent. However, when we later hear her reasons for doing so, in the form of 2 letters to her daughter, we see an entirely different sides to her. A principled woman, who was overwhelmed by the futility of life, wanted a kinder, fairer world for her child, and subsequently made a promise of silence, that she keeps to her dying day. Rachel’s messianic shadow looms heavy on all that happens after her, over the global actions of the Community as well as the lives of her husband and daughter. She is at once a malicious eminence grise and a scapegoat open to the projections of all. One notion I had when I finished is that it's never revealed what Rachel's plan really was, other than the wishy-washy notion that people need to 'be silent and listen to/hear each other more'. But to what end? What are we listening for? Who do we need to listen to? It never explains why Rachel was obsessed with disasters or why she decided to finally pitch a tent and never speak again. The Community - the organisation/lobby group/cult founded by Em's mum Rachel - being a figment of the authors imagination, was impressive. The use of her mother's notebooks and then her own experiences while working for the Community, made it believable and sinister. I wanted to get through it to see what happened. I had no idea how it would end. As well as a good read, it provides a warning.

Grove Press An imprint of Grove Atlantic, an American independent publisher, who publish in the UK through Atlantic Books. What happens when a silent protest becomes a movement? This is what is explored in Hailey’s new novel The Silence Project. 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. I loved how this novel was structured, told from Emilia’s perspective in hybrid panorama interview/intimate personal diary style, I know that sounds like it would make for rather odd reading but trust me, it doesn’t. The novel opens with the preface to Emilia Morris’s book, written by the lady herself, there is a very practiced detachment to her words, after all she is the iconoclast’s Rachel of Chalkham’s daughter, who ironically up to this point has been silent on the subject of her mother. From the outset you can see Emilia’s determination to be honest and factual about her recollections and emotionally removed; I think you can assess from her style of prose, that her aim is to not pen an emotive, scandalous tell all because that will destroy and detract from her imperative to reveal the truth or her truth, regarding her relationship with her mother (which as you can imagine, hasn’t been the hallmark version) and all that transpired or transpires relating to her mother’s Silence Project, the silent sisterhood, the growth of ‘The Community’ and their stratospheric rise after ‘the event’ and their ever increasing power and prominence in the socio-political environment on a global scale and the toxic impact of their dominance.