The Silent Companions: The perfect spooky tale to curl up with this autumn

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I don’t like stories about evil children, and I especially didn’t like the implication that disability is connected with evilness, or the disability and/or evilness come from trying to go against God (or nature). I am also not much of a horror person, and not a gothic novel person, so I am not the intended audience of this one. I agree that it was very effectively creepy, but the story also gave me the creeps in a bad way. Not just the misuse of the Romani characters, but the overall plot. It seemed like the author was aiming for a feminist slant, but it didn’t feel feminist to me. Was reading this on Halloween, and it was just creepy enough without being absolutely terrifying. The silent companions, things I had never heard of, make an appearance and keep making appearances despite the fact that they are gotten rid of time and time again. The journals from the past reveal the dabbling in of witchcraft and of terrible wrongs committed. As a reader I was never quite sure what was real and what was imagined. If what Elsie was seeing and experiencing was in her mind or an actual happening. Loved the Gothic, forboding style of this, the constant tension, and the mix between past and present. Other interesting characters are presented and one will have an important part in the twist at the end.

The Silent Companions continues along the three timelines of Anne and Hetta in the 1600s, Elsie and Sarah at the Bridge in 1865, and Elsie at the asylum. The Silent Companions is brilliantly crafted for maximum suspense as Elsie tries to understand what happened to herself and to her deceased husband, and to uncover the source of evil infecting his estate. But to understand these mysteries, Elsie must also come to terms with her own haunted past. The most common interpretation of presence experiences is that they represent some kind of disruption to the internal mapping of one’s own body. Along with presence experiences, survival scenarios are associated with a variety of autoscopic phenomena, such as out-of-body experiences or seeing one’s own doppelganger. Given that felt presences in such situations often feel like they are linked to the person having the experience, it has been suggested that they may be a projection of one’s own body-map, prompted by extreme conditions and stress (Brugger et al., 1997). Granqvist, P., Fredrikson, M., Unge, P. et al. (2005). Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields. Neuroscience Letters, 379(1), 1–6. And her present; Elsie Bainbridge is left mute and has disfiguring scars all over her body. This was caused by a house fire that she apparently started, and she faces being hung for arson.Her first novel for Raven Books THE SILENT COMPANIONS won the WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award 2018 and featured in both the Zoe Ball and Radio 2 Book Clubs. Other Gothic novels include THE CORSET (THE POISON THREAD in USA), BONE CHINA and THE SHAPE OF DARKNESS (2020) The Court Dancertells the story of Yi Jin, a young woman who dances at the court of the emperor of the Joseon Dynasty. Jardri, R., Pouchet, A., Pins, D. & Thomas, P. (2011). Cortical activations during auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 168(1), 73–81.

Countless tales have emerged to explain the origin of these curious objects. Because they create the illusion of a real human presence, it’s been suggested they were used to deter potential burglars or enemy soldiers. A very different explanation is that they were used to combat loneliness, hence their other name, silent companions. Other uses for dummy boards In these cases, the idea of a voice not just being an auditory experience, but also one with a social and agent-like presence becomes much more tangible (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, in press). Moseley, P., Alderson-Day, B., Ellison, A. et al. (2015). Noninvasive brain stimulation and auditory verbal hallucinations: New techniques and future directions. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, 515.

A Victorian ghost story that evokes a most unsettling kind of fear, The Silent Companions is a tale that creeps its way through the consciousness in ways you least expect—much like the companions themselves. Did you scare yourself at all when you were writing the book? (You certainly scared your editor when she was editing it!) The titular Jane Eyre grows up in a cold and unloving household and eventually finds work and a home in the service of Mr Rochester, or rather in the service of his daughter as Jane becomes her governess. What an eerie story! Be aware that if you have a fear of wooden dolls with eyes that follow you when you move around, this is probably not a book for you (or maybe it’s exactly the book for you, then!) :-) It was hard to process the sudden success of the book. One day I was in the office photocopying in my role as an assistant, then suddenly I was being asked to film for the Zoe Ball book club! Though much of it feels like a blur now, I remember the great day I spent with Juliet meeting the publishers who wanted to offer on the novel, being plied with cake and various Silent Companions-themed goodies.

THE SILENT COMPANIONS by LAURA PURCELL is a spooky, eerie, haunting, creepy, and absolutely fantastic gothic ghost story. I absolutely loved the creepy feel to it and I was immediately drawn into this story right from the very start. There is an underlying sense of foreboding throughout this whole story that had me questioning whether the events that were happening were supernatural, menacing or manipulation. It’s a tale of love and class divide, a scathing commentary on the biases and prejudices between classes which were prevalent in Austen’s time. If you’re looking for books like Downton Abbey, Mansfield Park is your first call, without a doubt. I also felt like there were some plot threads and characters raised and then never fully used or developed – Anne’s sister, the minister in 1865.Your main character, Elsie Bainbridge, has faced immense hardship and tragedy even before the main events of the novel begin. Was she your favourite character to write?

And the Austen novel that most parallels Downton Abbey is Mansfield Park. The story of Fanny Price, a young woman who is forced to live with her wealthy uncle – a slave and plantation owner – and his wife in their stately home of Mansfield Park.

Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. Following a short review, please feel free to discuss the book in the comments! Fans of Gothic, atmospheric Victorian books should look no further - The Silent Companions should be right up your alley! This is Gothic done right! Have you ever read a book where the Author is going for Gothic and just fails to hit the mark? The Author not only hits the mark -she nails it. The crumbling estate is creepy and dreary. The countryside is dripping with atmosphere and dread. The villagers are hostile and refuse to help anyone at the country estate known as the Bridge. This story creeps along as does the feelings of dread and apprehension in this book. This story does jump around a little bit from the present day, to the past, to the not so distant past but it is never confusing. During the book, the reader sees the main character of Elise in a psychiatric hospital being evaluated by a psychiatrist. There has been a fire and Elise is believed to have started it and she is considered to be responsible for deaths which occurred before and during the fire. The reader also gets a glimpse into the year 1635, when a family lives at the country estate. The reader learns what occurred during the time and finally we see Elise moving into the estate and her time spent living in the home. This is where the creep factor made a hasty exit for me. I could not fully succumb to the terror of a wooden picture board. The premise was clever; that is not in question. My trouble was that I was not terribly fond of Elsie, and wanted much more detail about her ancestor, Anne Bainbridge. This was a woman who conjured a pregnancy from potions and chants, and wound up with a troubled baby girl. For me, The Silent Companions did not become animated until Anne’s diary was discovered, and we finally got a glimpse of her life with her mute daughter Hetta, and the evil that lurked in every dark corner. Hetta was a horror story all by herself. SHE was the gothic tale that I was anticipating. Had the novel revolved around this young lady, this would have been a very different review.