Isla Green is far from home when her father rings from Sydney. Thirty years ago their neighbour Mandy disappeared and Isla’s dad is believed to be the last person who saw her. Isla returns home to find out what really happened in 1967, worried that her father isn’t telling the complete truth. She realises there are others who wish their secrets remain hidden. On the brink of a new life, does Isla want to return to her old one? I enjoyed the sense of claustrophobia that the author showcases. It felt uncomfortable at times, exactly as it should.

I found this quite a difficult read; in that it covered topics causing stress, excessive drinking, violence, families separating. The book also covers the removal of children by the police from their homes in Australia, naively I’ve never heard about this and so found the start of the book harder to comprehend. Perhaps other readers are more aware of this, if not the authors notes at the end explain more but I didn’t read this until after finishing the book. Steve removes children from their homes, in his job for the police, it covers his emotions and how this influences his marriage and relationships. When his neighbours husband is accused of the murder of Steve’s wife his daughter comes home from Australia to visit and in the period of her visit we learn what happened in the past and how this has shaped her family today. I did find it a hard read in that it’s not a cheery book, but it’s very well-written and addresses difficult topics and the characters are so clearly described you can picture them as if you’re there. The ending is brilliant and makes your emotions do a full loop.

With thanks to The Borough Press and NetGalley for the ARC.

A story split in 2, set in 1967 and 1997.

Isla Green lives in London, she gets a call in the middle of the night from her father back home in Australia and she is thrust back in time to when she was growing up.

The story centres around the mysterious disappearance of her neighbour, Mandy.

Isla relives the tensions and upset of her parents traumatic marriage and her place in their relationship.
Everyone assumed Mandy just left home one day and never came home, now 30 years later that is called into question and Isla helps unravel the 30 year old mystery.

An interesting debut and I'll look forward to the next book from an exciting new author.

An interesting story that keeps you involved from the beginning right through until end. Recommended to those who readers who enjoy this type of book.

This book is very well written, however I found it to be a difficult and depressing read. The narrative moves between two timelines of 1967 and 1997 in Sydney, Australia. It deals with the journey Isla makes from London to Australia in 1997, in an effort to support her Dad Joe, and to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of Mandy, in 1967. Mandy was their one time neighbour, and Isla’s babysitter, when the two families lived next door to each other in Sydney. Mandy’s husband Steve was a policeman burdened with a very challenging task, which affected him mentally. The description of Steve’s task is harrowing, and describes a shameful piece of history for Australia and for Britain.
In this story I feel that none of the characters is particularly likeable, and all seem to be incredibly unhappy for a variety of reasons, including alcoholism, unhappy marriages, family tensions, secrets, and lies.
Altogether, I found the book unappealing, and a challenging story to go back to.
I freely concede that it may be due to my own situation, as the nation enters Week 8 of isolation due to Coronavirus pandemic. For that reason, I’m unable to finish this title, but it may well be one that I revisit when life has become more ‘normal ’ for us all.

My thanks to the editor and Netgalley for my advance copy of this book.

The Silence is the subject of this week’s #HarperFictionFriday, and I am glad the HarperCollins PR team chose it, since it is one that might otherwise have passed me by.

Isla is an Australian living in London and about to buy her first flat when she receives a disturbing call from home – her childhood neighbour Mandy has been reported missing and her father has been asked to help police with their enquiries. Isla drops everything to return home and support him, even though it means a great disruption to her own life, and going back to stay with her parents, whose relationship has been troubled for as long as she can remember – and certainly since 1967, when the police think Mandy may have been killed. Despite having been in England with her mother when the disappearance took place, Isla is certain that her Dad can’t possibly have been involved in the mystery.

This is a great premise for a book, and Susan Allott has created some very memorable characters – Isla herself, Mandy, the woman at the centre of all the intrigue, and Isla’s family and neighbours – not least Steve, who in 1967 was one of the police officers tasked with removing Aboriginal children from their families. As the tale unfolds, we witness not only his marriage to Mandy hit the rocks, but Steve’s own mental health unraveling as he becomes more and more affected by seeing the institutions into which he is asked to deposit the children and his growing certainty that he is doing something very wrong. Even though they are state-sanctioned, the removals, he becomes certain, are just not right. He is a man on the wrong side of History and it undoes him utterly.

In fact, this is a book peopled by characters in deep trouble. Isla herself is a recovering alcoholic; her father is an uncontrolled one; her mother is struggling to come to terms with having broken away from her unhappy marriage and gone back to England in 1967 only to return and find it just as bad, if not worse. Other neighbours were aware that Mandy had gone away suddenly but chose not to speak about her ever again, and some of them are troubled by this. Isla’s younger brother, Scott, has managed to make his own peace with his parents’ unhappy lives and has created a good home of his own in Sydney, from which he supports them as much as possible through the police enquiry without, it seems, experiencing the triggering effects of being in their company too much.

The real brilliance of the book is, I think, the way the author conveys the sense of a powder keg ready to blow at any moment in 1967. We are not surprised by the reveal of the murderer, but keep on reading because we want to see how exactly these unhappy people managed to come to such a sorry pass. I also like the way that Allott does not give us a happy ending, but a hopeful one – she has essentially taken us on Isla’s journey to full adulthood, no longer haunted by her child’s eye impressions of her family and the half-remembered memories of her past. Having created a character that could have been portrayed as a monster, Isla’s father is also left on the point of doing a good thing, and we see that people are not evil, but broken and complicated.

The political climate, with the Aboriginal children’s forced removals, is striking and significant, but it is difficult to discuss without giving away spoilers. Suffice it to say that as a portrait of the most brutal forms of systemic racism it is both chilling and, I believe, very accurate. The scene in which a police officer actually blames a baby for filling its nappy will remain with me for a long time, alongside memories of real-world racism I have witnessed. Just an exceptional piece of writing.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the Borough Press for the ARC, and to Harper PR for highlighting the book through their #HarperFictionFriday Twitter chat.

London, 1997: Isla is awakened in the middle of the night by a call from her father Joe, in Sydney.
The police have reason to believe that Joe is the last person to have seen their next door neighbour Mandy, who disappeared thirty years ago. It was thought that Mandy had moved house with her husband Steve, as they tried to revive their troubled marriage, but it now seems no one has seen her since the day she left, and this puts Joe under suspicion of murder.

Isla knows she must reluctantly return to Sydney, for the first time in many years, to try to help her father prove his innocence, but once she is there, she is flooded with memories of Mandy, the kindly woman who used to look after her as a child. Other, less pleasant memories bubble to the surface too, as the strained relationship between her parents causes Isla to confront the truth about her parents and her own shortcomings.
As Isla delves into the past, she discovers that there are long buried secrets about the relationship between her parents and the couple next door. What really happened between Mandy, Steve and her own parents, and how is this related to the conspiracy of silence that surrounds the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families?

******************************************************************

What an absolute cracker of a debut novel! In turns, The Silence, is an outstanding domestic drama full of raw emotion, about the consequences that arise when there are secrets between partners; a tense and beautifully paced murder-mystery cum thriller, full of suspense; and a fascinating historical fiction work that brings to light the terrible truth about a shockingly arrogant social policy that had tragic consequences.
The Silence follows a dual timeline format that takes the reader back and forth between the scorching summer of 1967, and the stormy days of a 1997 autumn.

The 1967 storyline sees Joe and his pregnant wife, Louisa, having apparently insurmountable marital problems, which they are trying to keep away from their young daughter, Isla. Both Joe and Louisa are from England, and although Joe loves the Australian way of life, Louisa is miserable and lonely - her only friend is her next door neighbour Mandy, who she confides in about her unhappiness and desire to return to England. Joe adores Isla, but seems bewildered by his wife's attitude, and thinks her ungrateful - it doesn't help their relationship any that he is a heavy drinker, a habit he seems to have inherited from his alcoholic father....a habit that is prone to unleash his temper and his fists.

Meanwhile, Mandy is having relationship problems of her own. Her husband Steve is a policeman, who has been given the task of removing Aboriginal children from their homes and placing them in foster care or bleak children's homes. Steve desperately wants a child of his own and believes Mandy would like the same, but she is not so sure, and is convinced she is not cut our for motherhood - like her own mother. Mandy feels herself falling out of love with Steve, lying about trying for a baby, and becoming more and more frustrated with her life. She is doing her best to ignore that Steve's job is becoming increasingly difficult for him to carry out and breaking him up inside.

Things come to a head when Louisa empties the joint savings account Joe has been building up to buy a car, and takes Isla back to England, leaving Joe a note which simply says "Sorry..". Joe is desperate and drinking heavily, Mandy is unhappy and feels sorry for Joe - and the inevitable affair ensues.

The 1997 strand of our story, finds Isla back in her childhood home in Sydney, after an absence of ten years. She knows her father is a person of interest in the mysterious disappearance of Mandy thirty years ago - a woman she remembers as being kind and generous - who seems to have disappeared during the time she and her mother were back in England. She also remembers that she and the other local children were always afraid that the unstable Steve would take them away in his truck - a part of the past that is brought into clear focus by the current political climate in the Australia she has returned to.

Isla remembers little about the few months she and her mother were in England, other than that she hated it and wanted nothing more than to return to Sydney. She only knows that her mother did not leave again, even tough the relationship between her parents continued to be a volatile one. Isla is convinced that her father had nothing to do with Mandy's disappearance, but her mother clearly thinks otherwise. As Isla starts to dig into the past, and secrets that have been long buried come to light, she is not so sure about her father. Could he really have done what her mother believes him more than capable of?

Isla is struggling with demons of her own. Unlike her younger brother, she has inherited her father's penchant for alcohol, which has caused her life to get terribly out of control. Her relationship has fallen apart because of her drinking and tendency to resort to violence, just like the father she idolised. But she has been on the wagon for some months now, determined to make a positive change. Isla will not rest until she knows the truth - something that she and the local police appear to have differing ideas about.

This story is wonderfully involved, with deliciously complex characters. It seems like everyone here has something in their life that they are not proud of, secrets they are keen to hide. There are two sides to every story and this comes across so well in our cast of players. I really enjoyed the skillful way Susan Allott achieved this, playing out the tension of the murder mystery alongside the ups and downs of the human relationships - characters driven to breaking point by very real situations - although it is hard to justify some of the actions our characters resort to.

In addition, Susan Allott calls attention to how the balance of power has shifted somewhat between men and women in the way the relationships change between the characters over time - something while ultimately has a crucial outcome on the outcome of the investigation into the disappearance of Mandy. Things have changed over the thirty years between 1967 and 1997, and our author handles this with a deft touch.
I was also very impressed with the way our author turns one of the more cliched tropes on its head in this book, by exploring the idea that the alcoholic/violent strain does not necessarily have to pass down the male line of a family. Instead, although Joe has certainly inherited his volatile and addictive ways from his father, it is his daughter who has been fated to continue in this vein rather than his son - moreover, a son who sees his father for what he is and despises him for it. I found this rather refreshing.

Although this is a story about how lies and secrets in relationships can lead to tragic outcomes, the most shocking part of Susan Allott's incredible book is the way she brings to light the factual story of the Aboriginal children removed by force from their parents - the Stolen Generations. No one knows how may children were removed from their homes, but official government estimates put the figure at anything between one in three and one in ten indigenous children having been forcibly taken from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970. To say this is abominable is to put it mildly, but it becomes even worse when you consider where the children were taken and the tragedy of the abuse they experienced as a result. This is something I knew nothing about until reading this book.

Interestingly, Susan Allott makes a good case for British school children to learn a lot more about Australian history than they currently do, and I have to agree with her there - especially after recently reading Alison Booth's fabulous book The Philosopher's Daughters, which also highlights some pretty despicable goings on in Australia's past.

You can't fail to have gathered by now that I found this book pretty impressive, especially for a debut, and I can't wait to see what Susan Allott produces next. Highly recommended!

Five stars for The Silence, no question! It's a deftly-written novel which will keep your attention from the very first page to the very last. Susan Allott is such a confident, skilled novelist that you would assume this was her tenth book, not her first.

The setting is beautifully-wrought across 1960s Australia, and 1990s London/Australia, with two dual narratives which weave in and out of each other seamlessly. You're kept guessing right to the end, and the resolution is worth the wait.

Ideal for fans of Jane Harper, The Silence comes highly recommended.

Wow! This has given me some serious food for thought.

The novel is set out along dual timelines. In 1997 Isla receives a phone call at her London home from her father back home in Australia. He tells her that the police are investigating the disappearance of Mandy Green, their next door neighbour from 30 years ago, and he was believed to have been the last person to have seen her alive. Troubled Isla agrees to fly back home to lend some support to her family, and ultimately ends up trying to help solve the mystery and exonerate her father.

In 1967 we learn about the relationships between the two households and wonder whether Mandy is destined to be murdered by someone in her neighbourhood. I love a dual timeline and this one is plotted and paced particularly well. I had a few theories about what happened to Mandy but, as per usual, I was completely wrong!

While I found the whole story to be well written, there are flashes of utter brilliance in Allott’s writing. There were a couple of moments that genuinely had me holding my breath and one passage in particular that moved me to tears.

The evocation of 1960s colonial Australia was hugely eye-opening, with the underlying racial tensions being a particularly horrifying aspect of the narrative. Without giving away any spoilers, we find out early in the book that Steve, Mandy’s husband, is a police officer whose specific task is so appalling that I couldn’t believe it was actually based in any fact! That Aboriginal people were treated so terribly and so relatively recently brought tears to my eyes and has prompted me to read more on the subject.

If you’re looking for an engaging, well-written and, at times, heart-wrenching mystery then I can highly recommend you read this.

Wowzer this book tied me up in knots and then unraveled at a breathtaking speed. Yet another book that is difficult to review without giving away too many plot spoilers. The characters are well drawn, believable and, while they're not always likable, the author gets you to understand why they act they way they do. I want to reread this book to pick up more of the subtleties that lie within the pages. Totally recommended. I'll be looking out for more by Susan Allott.

Isla is returning home to Australia after her dad is suspected of killing their neighbour. Isla refuses to believe he could be involved but she soon discovers theres more to the story than she knows. Could her alcoholic father actually be responsible?

This was a dark read dealing with some hard issues like alcoholism and aboriginal children being removed from their homes. It's heavy and heartbreaking at times. The story was interesting though I had figured who killed Mandy. The plot was steady and jumps from present time to the past adding more depth to the story. It was hard to like the characters in this as they're all flawed but it added to the story. A dark but good read.

This is an assured and compulsive novel. It has the drive of a really good mystery but is much more than that, encompassing the personal experience of two Australian women in the late 60s, the migrant experience, and the scandal of Aboriginal children who for decades were forcibly removed from their families and placed in care, with long-lived trauma for them and their families.

Isla, single, in her mid-30s, a recovering alcoholic, living in London for the past ten years, goes back to her childhood home in Sydney and her troubled family when her father calls to say he is under investigation for the disappearance of a former neighbour 30 years before. She is drawn back into the traumatic world she had tried to escape - her parents' troubled marriage, her father's history of alcoholism and abuse, her mother's discontent, her divided loyalties, and the unhealthy atmosphere of a community which sees everything but says nothing.

The narrative comes in short chunks told from the viewpoints of the various key characters - Isla, her father Joe and mother Louisa, the missing neighbour Mandy and her policeman husband Steve. Mandy's disappearance in the late 60s goes unreported until an inheritance in 1997 prompts a search for her. The narrative switches between the events of a few weeks in 1967 and Isla's return 30 years later as she tries to unravel long-held secrets and to piece together a narrative that will exonerate her flawed but beloved father. And as the personal secrets slowly come to light, this is mirrored in the unfolding of the short, tragic story of one abducted Aboriginal child who represents the legions of children lost to state-sanctioned kidnapping and abuse over more than 60 years, while the public closed its eyes.

This is a first novel to devour in one sitting and think about for days later. An impressive debut.

An atmospheric, well written debut by this author. Not only does this story, written over two time periods, follow the mystery of a woman who has not been seen for 30 years - and sadly not missed by anyone - but also the little known fact that up until the 1970s Aboriginal children were removed from their families and put into Homes. The only fault of the families is that they were poor and unable to support their children satisfactorily and the Homes they went too were often no better and they were often mistreated.
Many of the characters in this tale were alcoholics and how that affected them and their relationships is examined, as is the effect it had on the family as a whole.
So this story is multi-layered and fascinating - and thought-provoking.
I can't wait for the next title by this author.
Many thanks to Netgalley/Susan Allott/HarperCollins for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

The Silence is a family drama-mystery and an engrossing story, set in the UK (Hackney) and Australia (Sydney). In 1997, Isla Green receives a telephone call from her father, Joe in Sydney who informs her that he's a murder suspect. In 1967, thirty years earlier, the Green’s next-door neighbour Mandy Mallory vanished and it seems that Joe was the last person to have seen her alive. Initially, she was believed to have gone to start a new life elsewhere, but now as Mandy's family attempt to re-establish contact, there is no trace of her. Isla reluctantly returns to Sydney where she will learn the truth about herself, her family, and events that happened years ago...

Although this was not a book to 'enjoy' as such, it was nevertheless a thoroughly riveting and compulsive story. The plot was sound and the writing style of Susan Allott suited me well. I appreciated the smooth timeline transitions and although the pacing wasn't particularly fast-moving, there was no room for boredom either. The Silence was a story of secrets, relationship tensions and struggles, duplicity, and keeping up appearances. As the author revisited a period in Australian history about which I knew little, the sense of time and place were captured perfectly. The characters were drawn with an interesting, authentic cluster of layers, and there was a sense foreboding throughout, holding me in its thrall from the very first page. The main strength of the story was the adroit way in which Susan Allott handled the difficult subjects of domestic violence and Aboriginal children being taken from their families.

Though this was, in part, a bleak and disturbing story, I thought this was an excellent and emotionally resonant début, complete with an unforgettable resolution. Very highly recommended and well worth reading.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel at my request from The Borough Press via NetGalley and this review is my unbiased opinion.

A gripping read about the historical investigation into a woman's disappearance, and how this impacts the lives of two families. Also cleverly woven into the plot is a searing indictment of the forced removal of aboriginal children in Australia into "homes" The silence that surrounds them both and prevents people looking for answers and facing facts is well presented.
Thank you to netgalley and Harper Collins for an advance copy of this book

When Mandy goes missing, its presumed that her neighbour, Joe killed her as he was the last person to see her. Joe and Louisa were still settling into their new lives after emigrating to Australia. Mandy's husband, Steve was part of a police team in the sixties that were removing Aboriginal children from their homes and placing them into care homes. Joe's daughter, Isla goes to Australia to suppost her father.

This story is set over two timelines. 1960 -1990. It's told from Mandy and Isla's perspectives. The story also covers domestic violence and alcoholism. This is another whodunnit. There seems to be a few of them out just now, but 8m quite liking them. I don't want to say much ore as I would spoil it for potential readers. I was caught up quickly in this book. I really enjoyed it.

In the authors note she tells us how the Australian government have publicly apologised for what they did to the Aboriginal families but the British government never has. Its known as the stolen generations.

I would like to thank NetGalley, HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction and the author Susan Abbott for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 rounded up.
This is a very emotional read that recounts a rather unsavoury and, in the UK anyway, little known part of Australian history. Set in a dual timeline - 1967 & 1997, we follow Isla as she returns to her native Australia from the UK to assist her father, Joe, who has been accused of the murder of his neighbour who vanished 30 years since. And so begins a harrowing tale of what happened in 1967 between Joe & Louisa and neighbours Steve and Mandy. We follow Steve at work, the nature of which is something I will leave you to learn as the author intends, but it is rather harrowing and heartbreaking. Isla is not without her own issues though, but can she put them aside to help her father by uncovering the truth of what really happened to Mandy and, if she does, will she wish she hadn't?
Oh my, this tugged at every heartstring possible. But it's very balanced and never got too heavy, despite some of the content. It was not an easy book to read in parts but the way that the author delivered the story made me feel safe throughout and, although I did have a couple of respite breaks along the way, it never got too much to handle. It's a very character driven book rather than relying solely on plot for atmosphere and the characters are all very well drawn.
Pacing is quite slow in places but that suits the underlying feeling of claustrophobia and despair that parts of the novel generates. the dual timeline works really well with the past sections being injected into the present ones at exactly the right times for maximum effect. They also progress the novel well and, at times, provide well needed insight.
All in all, as well as a well plotted and executed character driven story, this is an important book for me as it gave me food for thought about what happened in Australia in the 60s which then led on to me finding out more about the subject. A good read and something new to learn about - albeit it on he dark side. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

This was a really good read. It goes between 1967 and 1997 and is about the disappearance of Mandy in 1967. There are a lot of secrets and lies and part of the story is about the removal of children from aboriginal families. This is a shameful part of Australian history that I knew about but I had not known that it was still happening as recent as 1967. This is a memorable read about families, alcoholism, abuse and lies.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Thanks to Net Galley and Harper Collins UK for an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.
Isla’s dad asks her to come home to Australia, he is a suspect in a missing person investigation.
How can a person be missing for 30 years and no one notice, someone must know what happened to Mandy, their neighbour from next door when Isla was a child, she has vague but fond memories of Mandy, her father is under suspicion as he seems to have been the last person to have seen Mandy alive.
The story is told in two timelines, 1967 when Isla was a child, often left in the care of Mandy, and 1997 where Isla finds herself doing some digging into the past, there are quite a few secrets to be discovered about both the young neighbouring couples.
Isla discovers that her parents and their neighbours, Steve and Mandy had marital problems, her father has hidden away a watch that belonged to Mandy, and she learns that Mandy’s husband Steve was a policeman and involved in removing Aboriginal Children from their families and placing them in State Homes, a piece of Australian history I did not know about. How do all these pieces fit together for Isla to get to the truth.
I didn’t particularly like any of the characters in this book, and for me the story dragged on a little.
3.5 stars

This book is set between 1967 and 1997 and focuses on the lives of two families. In 1997 in London, Isla received a call from her father. Thirty years earlier, their neighbour disappeared and Isla’s father was apparently the last person to see her alive. Isla returns to Australia and we have a novel full of secrets, lies, relationships and the history of Australia’s colonial past. This book is well written, it’s compelling and a definite must-read. Thank you to NetGalley, Harper Collins UK and the author for the chance to review.