I‘d heard very little about The Silence Project before picking it up and so I didn’t know what to expect from it. What eventuated was discovering a book that completely consumed me over the few days I read it. The Silence Project opens with Emilia watching her mother set herself on fire, sacrificing herself for a cause she started eight years prior. When Emilia was 13 years old, her mother Rachel set up a tent at the bottom of her garden and took a vow of silence, lasting up until the day she died, affirming that only by being silent can we really hear the voices of others. Over the years, more women join Rachel in solidarity, forming the Community. Told through a biological account, Emilia draws on her mother’s old notebooks to make sense of her mother’s actions and recounts the unprecedented global growth of the Community.
Towards the end of the book, Emilia remarks “I feel like I’m living in a prequel to some terrible dystopian novel” and that was exactly what reading The Silence Project felt like. While the book is fiction, it’s structured as a biography, making it feel eerily real. It demonstrates the making of what is essentially a cult, born with good intentions of encouraging people to listen to each other and bring about a more peaceful society, transpiring into something much more sinister and harmful. Hailey did so well to depict why so many women were inspired to join the Community, feeding on vulnerability, and the snowball effect this had across the globe. Particularly through the first half of the novel, I kept questioning what is Rachel actually trying to achieve by her silence, but I think this was the point, as Emilia and her father, Nick, pondered the same question.
When I first realised the novel was written as a biography, I was slightly wary that it would feel dense and distant, but at no point did I feel this. What I really liked about The Silence Project was the deep reflections Emilia had on her relationship with her mother. We sympathise with Emilia during her teenage years when she felt enraged and abandoned by her mother’s choices, and then after her death, forever marked as ‘Rachel’s daughter’ and racked with guilt over the consequences of her mother’s actions.
It needs to be mentioned that Hailey is often graphic in her descriptions, particularly of the burning, with some confronting ideas shared throughout the novel. It’s dark and shocking, but I think it’s also what makes the book as powerful as it is. I will also say that while I was completely compelled by the first part of the book, there were moments through the second half that felt too drawn out and I think slightly stunted the book’s momentum
Overall, I was so impressed by The Silence Project, even more knowing it’s a debut. It would make the perfect book club book, leaving you with so much to think about and discuss.
Rating: 4/5
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