{"id":3662,"date":"2020-05-08T08:33:48","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T15:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3662"},"modified":"2020-05-08T08:33:48","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T15:33:48","slug":"susan-allott-the-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/susan-allott-the-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan Allott: The Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is a very melancholy novel about people who live near each other, yet in isolation, thanks to a profound lack of communication.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s set in Australia in the late 60\u2019s, with a portion in the late 90\u2019s.\u00a0 Two couples live side by side in a new neighborhood, right on the ocean.\u00a0 Louise and Joe, immigrants from England, live in one house with their daughter, Isla.\u00a0 Next door are Steve and Mandy, who are childless.\u00a0 Mandy often looks after Isla.<\/p>\n

As the book opens, the adult Isla gets a call from her father, who says the police have been by to discuss Mandy, who had disappeared from the neighborhood many years ago.\u00a0 The central nugget of suspense in the novel concerns the relationships between the neighbors and between the couples themselves.\u00a0 What happened in the past that caused Mandy to disappear?\u00a0 Why would Isla\u2019s father, who seems devoted to his family, have had anything to do with her disappearance?<\/p>\n

Isla returns home to Australia from London.\u00a0 She is newly sober and comes home to a father who is an active alcoholic, and a bitter mother who resents everything about him.\u00a0 Cataclysmic things happen to each couple through the course of the story.<\/p>\n

Mandy is unhappy in her own marriage, thinking she\u2019s falling out of love with a man who desperately wants a child.\u00a0 As the book proceeds, her husband, Steve\u2019s, job becomes a larger part of the equation.\u00a0 In the 1960\u2019s, the Australian government took Aboriginal children from their homes and \u201cre-housed\u201d them.\u00a0 It\u2019s much like the shameful practice in the United States in a similar time period where Native American children were taken from the families and sent to boarding schools where they were \u201cwesternized\u201d.\u00a0 Both of these practices left a huge swath of heartbreak, trauma, and cultural disruption, and in Australia, these children are referred to as the lost generation.<\/p>\n

Steve is becoming desperate about his \u201cjob\u201d taking children, which he is starting to feel is plain wrong.\u00a0 He\u2019s part of a family where many of the men have served in the police force but he\u2019s at a breaking point.\u00a0 Mandy is having a hard time understanding it.<\/p>\n

Because neither Steve and Mandy or Joe and Louisa can communicate straightforwardly, and in fact, keep much to themselves, their relationships are difficult and unhappy.\u00a0 Neither are they able to communicate with one another as neighbors, though Louise appreciates Mandy\u2019s help with Isla and the two women are friendly.<\/p>\n

This is a beautifully written and concise novel, and the relationships are portrayed in a crisp manner.\u00a0 It saves the book from being overwhelmingly heartbreaking. Because the author does not dwell on the children being removed from homes in a great amount of detail, she allows the reader to take in this horrible process to a certain degree.<\/p>\n

As a novel, it\u2019s a lovely effort.\u00a0 It\u2019s a beautiful portrait of families and of marital dynamics.\u00a0 As a mystery, it\u2019s less successful, as the suspect pool is tiny, and the precipitating event becomes more and more obvious as the book unfolds.\u00a0 It\u2019s also atmospheric and evocative of a particular time and place \u2013 the portions set in the 60\u2019s were the most successful.\u00a0 And it\u2019s certainly a look at a time period, place and practice that were unknown to me and that I found fascinating.\u00a0 It hung around in my head for quite a while after finishing it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a very melancholy novel about people who live near each other, yet in isolation, thanks to a profound lack of communication.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s set in Australia in the late 60\u2019s, with a portion in the late 90\u2019s.\u00a0 Two couples live side by side in a new neighborhood, right on the ocean.\u00a0 Louise and Joe, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[352,11,354,14,353,291],"class_list":["post-3662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-austrailia","tag-international","tag-marriage-dynamics","tag-psychological","tag-susan-allott","tag-william-morrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3664,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions\/3664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}