The Silence Project

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It’s for anyone interested in dystopic fiction and about what happens when humans don't look outside their own spheres as to how to act. the novel idea of using footnotes as you would in a factual piece was a good way of allowing us to suspend out disbelief. Carole Hailey has conjured a gripping tale of transformation; its protagonist's clear-eyed, arresting voice is impossible to ignore. We practise gratitude by noticing the positives that exist around us, and by being thankful for things, places and people in our lives. From still wrangling with her relationship with her mother and the Community, to violence and protests, exploring beautiful nature and falling in love.

Emilia herself gets caught up in the Community in her efforts to rebuild her life, but comes to find a way to move on and find hope against the odds. Grown weary and frustrated with the same old minor protests, Rachel eventually decides, with many of her followers, to immolate herself in a final global protest. But The Silence Project really goes further than delivering a neat package, a hero’s journey, or a standard cult narrative. Emilia is celebrating her 13th birthday at her dad’s pub when she hears her mother’s voice for the last time. I assumed it was another publicity stunt, which of course it was, just not in the way that I was expecting.The day Rachel stopped speaking she turned away from our family and towards the publicity that she and her Community courted. The story is narrated by Rachel's daughter, which was an ingenious touch, as it explores the disconnect between the public figure and the maternal one.

They connect with audiences by sharing personal, often humorous and highly relatable stories that position mental health as an important part of life. The novel ping-pongs between chapters in the “Then” and the “Now”, although Now inevitably involves thinking about the past, and the Then is shrouded in what is being hidden.There are some really knotty and interesting moral and ethical issues explored, and I was so impressed by the level of world-building that had gone into it. On Emilia’s thirteenth birthday, her mother Rachel moves out of the family home and into a tent at the bottom of the garden. They bring their experiences and travel adventures into their presentations – sharing their own journeys, and encouraging audiences to bring Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness into their everyday lives.

A book that could almost be described as dystopian because of the picture it paints of the world, and it is a world that seems to be within touching distance of our world now - which is what makes it chilling. 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. The unexpected location for much of this portion of the book is the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country I know very little about, but is relayed in vivid, beautiful, ugly detail in Hailey’s book. Interestingly, in cities, many felt that noise is a kind of cocoon – that they are free because they are invisible,” she says. On Emilia’s thirteenth birthday, her mother, Rachel Morris, sets up a tent at the bottom of the garden and stops speaking.Thank you Netgalley for giving me an advance copy although I am not sure my review has done the book justice. To Emilia, it was never explained at the time, and she will now never know—no one will, as the only person who could fully explain was silent and is now dead. And as for the beginning - a prologue that describes our 'voice' - Emilia, watching her mother set herself alight and burn to death. I can see that it’s advertised as likely to appeal to readers of Vox, The Power, The End of Men – all books I’ve loved myself actually – and it will do, though as ever, I don’t think this is a book just for women, it makes points similar to 1984 at times about society and where we are or could be taking ourselves.