The Silence

How can a woman disappear and not be reported missing for thirty years? Susan Allott weaves a story around this mystery concerning two couples, who are for a short time neighbors in mid-60s Australia. The reader must sort through the history of the characters to figure out what happened. With a psychological depth and emotional complexity, each of the characters has personal demons and potential motives to get rid of Mandy, the missing woman. And as you will see, Mandy has reasons of her own to start a new life.

Steve and Mandy are trying to have a baby. At least that is what Steve thinks. Mandy has been taking birth control, not at all ready to become a mother. The pressure is building for Steve, who has an impossible job. As a policeman, he travels with a social worker to abduct aboriginal children from their families and place them in state-run orphanages. He deals with massive guilt, part of seeing the trauma hes inflicting on children whose only fault was being born to a First Nation family in poverty. He grapples daily with whether he can continue to do this job.

Next door, Joe and Louise have their own issues. They have a five-year-old daughter, Isla, whom they send to Mandy frequently for babysitting duties. Louise has a big case of homesickness for England where she grew up. Joe is driven to climb the corporate ladder for the prestige and money. Unfortunately, he drinks too much, and then he becomes violent. Louise takes Isla and flees to England. Joe then develops an attraction to Mandy.
The story alternates between two time periods, the 1960s when the couples first meet, and the 1990s when an adult Isla is summoned to Australia from England. Her father, Joe, is suspected by the police of knowing what happened to Mandy. Isla is an emotional wreck having just broken up with her boyfriend. She has resorted to drinking and needs to resolve old problems with her father.

What Allott does well is show the building tension in the relationships. The reader is to compelled to find out what happened. Allott threads in facts about the practice at the time in Australia of taking aboriginal children from their parents. This is a riveting read that captures life in small-town Australia in the mid-twentieth century. Mystery lovers will enjoy it.

Oh my goodness, this is a belter of a story! From start to finish, everything about this grabbed me. A dual timeline 1967/1997 kept me engrossed in Isla’s life, her parents Joe and Louisa, neighbours, Mandy and Steve. What happened to Mandy all those years ago? We are kept wondering. The mystery is never quite what it seems and Susan Allott does an excellent job of keeping the reader on the edge of their seat. Addiction, ex-pat lives, the plight of Aboriginal children and their families is explored and intelligently portrayed. I had no idea about this dark side of Australian history. Every book I read is part of my life learning curve and this one is right up there as one of the teachers I remember. Congratulations, Susan Allott on a truly excellent debut novel.

Great book. I couldnt stop reading. Families and characters with flaws, some people you couldnt like and others you rooted for. Set in a time when Half-caste Aborigine children were taken from their families and raised in institutional settings or given to whites to adoptin the 1960s! I never! Good mystery.

This book encompasses two families for 30 years. You get to know each character, flaws and all, in each family. The book shows that each character is both good and bad, which makes them very life-like and real. Susan Allott is very accurate about the time settings, both 1967 and 1997. I absolutely loved this book and will highly recommend it to all my reading friends.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like it but I didn’t love it. Too much unnecessary detail. Knowledge and description of area was excellent. Storyline was good but would have been better as a short story by cutting out details not pertinent to story at all.

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