{"id":5948,"date":"2024-09-18T07:54:22","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T14:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5948"},"modified":"2024-09-18T07:54:22","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T14:54:22","slug":"jenny-milchman-the-usual-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jenny-milchman-the-usual-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Jenny Milchman: The Usual Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Series Debut<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s been awhile since Jenny Milchman had a new book out (The Second Mother, <\/em>2020) but her brand of feminist, almost gentle, thrillers are always appealing and difficult to put down once you\u2019ve started reading one. \u00a0Her new book is the launch of a series featuring Dr. Arles Shepherd, a therapist who, as the book opens, is in disgrace. She\u2019s been fired from her job as she appears to have huge gaps in her memory, one of which happened during a session with a client.<\/p>\n

Arles also has an ailing stepfather suffering from dementia, and when she visits, it\u2019s clear there\u2019s some kind of bad emotional backstory, and that he\u2019s hung on to a family property that belongs to her.\u00a0 She plans to take over the property and turn it into a therapeutic immersive camp for families.\u00a0 It\u2019s also clear she\u2019s had a long obsession with a certain photograph, and she\u2019s just found the identity of the person in the photo.\u00a0 Part of the reason for her therapy camp is the woman in the photo, who happens to have an autistic son.\u00a0 She\u2019s a perfect fit for the camp.<\/p>\n

Arles heads to upstate New York, where the camp is located, and finds she has much to do to get the place ready.\u00a0 She finds squatters in the basement \u2013 a mother and daughter \u2013 and quickly hires the mother as a cook and assistant.\u00a0 This was the \u201cCinderella\u201d part of the book, and I was all for it, but of course there are many deeper themes which begin to come to the fore as her patients arrive.<\/p>\n

Arles\u2019 concept of immersive family therapy involves the entire family, and the issues of everyone in the family, not just the \u201csick\u201d one.\u00a0 One of her first families is that of an anorexic patient she had been treating at her old job, and the other is a couple recently escaped from a church cult.\u00a0 And she\u2019s awaiting Louise, the woman in her photo, and her autistic son, Geary.\u00a0 Arles suspects there\u2019s something off about Geary\u2019s diagnosis.<\/p>\n

While some of the therapy parts of the book are among the strongest threads, there\u2019s another very strong thread, and that\u2019s the power and agency of women characters.\u00a0 Parallel to the story of Arles and Louise is the disappearance of 12-year-old Bea, who vanished on her way home from school one day.\u00a0 Her distraught parents are one tick away from total collapse, and the only thing keeping her dad going is when two true crime podcasters tell him they\u2019ve been following the case, and that Bea is \u201ca blade sheathed in silk\u201d.\u00a0 What they mean is that she\u2019s tough and smart, and they walk him through why they think that way.\u00a0 It\u2019s his only nugget of hope.<\/p>\n

Throughout the book, Arles reminds herself to use her voice, to be strong, to tell what she knows, and she tells her patients the same.\u00a0 One of the best scenes involves the man-splaining dad of the anorexic girl. Arles ultimately tells herself: \u201cshe wouldn\u2019t impose on herself the blame for one more man\u2019s evil.\u00a0 No woman should ever do that.\u201d\u00a0 While Arles talks the talk she doesn’t always walk the walk.\u00a0 She does have her own issues to work through, some tied to the very house where she\u2019s chosen to set her family camp.<\/p>\n

The suspense part of the book tightens up toward the end as the various threads of the story begin to come together in very unexpected ways.\u00a0 This is a psychological thriller in every sense of the word as the crime is solved by the actual psychology of the people involved.\u00a0 This is a compelling read and made me very glad Milchman has returned pen to paper. —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Series Debut It\u2019s been awhile since Jenny Milchman had a new book out (The Second Mother, 2020) but her brand of feminist, almost gentle, thrillers are always appealing and difficult to put down once you\u2019ve started reading one. \u00a0Her new book is the launch of a series featuring Dr. Arles Shepherd, a therapist who, as … 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":[1832,1647,1830,615,1276,1831,1731,491],"class_list":["post-5948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-arles-shepherd","tag-childhood-trauma","tag-jenny-milchman","tag-psychological-suspense","tag-robin-agnew","tag-the-usual-silence","tag-thomas-and-mercer","tag-upstate-new-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948","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=5948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5975,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions\/5975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}