The Silence Project

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This was a true masterpiece, so well thought out, so well written I think it's definitely going to be a top book for 2023!!!!

July 2023 Atlantic to publish Kerry Andrew’s moving “Sarah Moss meets The Last Of Us” novel Spring 2024 I absolutely loved The Silence Project. I was hungry for a feminist novel with a dystopian (or utopian) slant, and this delivered in spades. Carole Hailey’s novel ‘The Silence Project’ is published by Atlantic Books and is available from all good bookshops.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’. It has been eleven years since my mother’s death, but the questions never stop. Everyone remains just as fascinated by her as they have always been and believes this gives them the right to ask me anything. What was Rachel of Chalkham like when she was plain Rachel Morris? How do I feel having the architect of the Event as my mother? Am I proud of her? Ashamed of her? Do I feel any guilt about what she did? Question after question, year after year, until I have had to accept that the questions aren’t going away. On the contrary, my silence seems to fuel their obsession ( just like her silence fuelled everything that happened).

Briefly, Emilia Morris is writing a book about her mother Rachel, who committed suicide as part of a world-wide protest. Rachel is the founder of the Community, a cult which at first appears to have peaceful, beneficial aims. Since Rachel’s death the Community has become an extremely powerful presence, and the reader begins to question just how beneficial these aims are. This could also be interpreted as a masterclass in dystopian literature. We’re drawn in by recognisable figures and events, before we split to an alternate reality. I particularly enjoyed the nod to Louis Theroux, when a ‘BBC documentary maker,’ of something called ‘Curious Collections,’ arrives at the community to interview its members. In fact, I shouted ‘It’s Louis,’ so loudly and enthusiastically, my dog leapt off my lap and ran barking to the door, convinced we had a visitor. The scene where protesting women are dragged away by overly violent police, shows similarities of the Sarah Everard vigil. Furthermore, having just watched Liz Truss become PM by default, the words in response to Gordon Brown’s takeover from Tony Blair are astonishingly prophetic. One of the women comments, “was it fair for the PM to be someone who hasn’t stood in a general election, as leader of the party? …Who hasn’t actually listened to the people they represent.” The cult continues and Emilia finds herself drawn into it. She goes to work for the Community in the Congo and meets a wonderful family who become an important part of her life.The narrative throws up many other questions too along the way, the kind with no clear answers. Is silence really silent if words are still communicated through technology? To what extent is the internet integral to modern protest movements? Certainly in the case of recent events in Iran the internet has been a vital vehicle for communication. Moreover, movements such as Extinction Rebellion rely heavily on social media to garner support. The BBC Radio 2 Book Club announced on 24 January that its new home is on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. She hadn't heard her Mother speak since she was thirteen, not even in those final painful moments, but she's determined to finally find her own voice and speak about just how twisted The Community her Mother created has become in the years since her death. Emilia's 'book' documents her life from her 13th birthday onwards, going into detail about the early days of her mum's mission, up to her suicide, and beyond when Emilia gets pulled into working with the Community and is starting to be blinded by their manipulation. By publishing her accounts, Emilia is hoping to show the world (who are eating out of the now powerful Community's hands) that the saint-like image they've built up of Rachel is wrong and the Community is dangerous.

It could easily happen. I particularly liked that The Event is only the midday point of Emilia’s account. I wasn’t sure what could follow her description of this, but her own story and life post-Event is just as important in the telling, as it shows how Rachel’s Community grew and changed following this, and was both scary and fascinating to read about. It could all so easily happen. This book - as the author says - is a blend of fact and fiction. In places I had to stop and think where one ended and the other started. It is an amazing, heart-rending bumpy ride which shows how one person, with one act, could change the world. There are so many truths in the book, mixed in with so much deceit. We need to keep our wits about us - and listen! 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. Carole Hailey completed the six-month Guardian/UEA novel writing course taught by Bernardine Evaristo, who imbued her with such a love for writing fiction that she abandoned her career in law to undertake an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, followed by a PhD in Creative Writing at Swansea University. Carole was a London Library Emerging Writer 2020/21. The Silence Project was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award 2020 and highly commended by the judges. It’s dystopian, but real in a strange way and as well as being escapist fiction, it’s relevant. I really enjoyed this and heartily recommend it to anyone looking for something a little different, but with substance.

In such a dissonant and polarised world, Rachel who relinquishes her voice for silence has left herself entirely open to interpretation.

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. Rachel was none of these. She was neither saint nor demon. No matter what she did, she was very human. She was deeply flawed and deeply courageous. She was a bad person and a good one. She was also my Mother." Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & Corvus for my lovely, gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone. In our current global state of perpetual crisis, agendas collide and powers clash. Whilst rights are not pie, rights can indeed conflict. One such very disturbing ethical issue ends up facing Emilia directly when she becomes involved with the Community and goes to work in the Democratic republic of Congo.The book takes a particularly interesting turn when the narrator begins to question the nature of her work in Congo and I think it does a pretty good job of showing nuance where somebody does something that's harmful to others with the best intentions, and how they cope with the guilt when they realise that actually their actions had an unspoken and downright racist motive.