Gillard

House of Silence – Linda Gillard

StuckinaBook All , , , 33 Comments

The aftermath of A Century of Books definitely seems to be a sudden dash towards 21st century books, particularly those I’ve had on hold for a while.  And few books have hovered more determinedly around my consciousness than Linda Gillard’s House of Silence (2011).  I’d read her first three novels, and enjoyed them all – one to this-is-incredibly-I-love-it standards. Although I’ve never met Linda Gillard, we used to be in the same book discussion list, and we’re friends on Facebook, so I’m putting this kind gift in Reading Presently.  Them’s my rules.  And it’s not even the first time she’s given me a copy of the book.

As many of you will know, Linda Gillard is a runaway Kindle bestseller – we’re talking 30,000 copies of House of Silence here, let alone her other Kindle titles – and has a devoted audience around the world.  And then, lolloping up behind them, wearing too many belts and clearly thinking the calculator in his hand is a mobile phone, comes me.  I don’t have a Kindle, or any of the other-ereaders-are-available.  I don’t want one even a tiny bit.  The only advantage they have, in fact – and this has quite genuinely appeared on my mental pros/cons list – is access to Linda Gillard’s novels.

Yes, yes, I know.  Kindle-for-PC.  I downloaded it; Linda kindly gave me a download of House of Silence.  I tried to read it.  I read the first page every now and then… and got no further.  It was like standing outside a bank vault and not having the combination – because, try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to read an e-book.  It took me months to read the one my good friend had written, which even thanked me in it.

And then – praise be! – Linda published it as a POD paperback, and sent me a review copy of that.  Huzzah!  I read it, and, dear reader, it was good.  Which is just as well, after all that.

(Incidentally, isn’t the cover gorgeous?  Unlike most self-published authors, Linda Gillard goes the extra mile with design and aesthetic, paying a designer for this beautiful look.  What a shame that easily her best novel, A Lifetime Burning, should also have easily her worst cover… but the new cover for the Kindle edition is beautiful.)

House of Silence has been advertised as Rebecca meets Cold Comfort Farm – both traits I could identify, and which can definitely be no bad thing – but, more than that, it felt reliably Gillard to me.  In terms of period, event, and even genre Linda is versatile – but certain ingredients stand out as characteristic.  The most dominant of these is the feel of the book and the characters, vague as that sounds – with Linda Gillard’s novels, you know you’re going to get strong emotions and passionate people, trammeled by everyday experience, but refusing to lie entirely dormant…

Guinevere (known as Gwen) works alongside actors, in the wardrobe department.  Already, I’m sold – you might know how I love books which feature actors, and Gillard uses Gwen’s knowledge of fabrics to ingenious effect as the novel progresses.  It is in this role that she first meets Alfie, who is having some issues with his breeches… one thing leads to another, and they end up dating.  Which, in turn, leads to her spending Christmas with him and his family, at beautiful old Creake Hall in Norfolk.  He’s a little reluctant for her to join him, but eventually is persuaded.

And what a group of eccentrics they find!  Chief amongst them – although appearing very little on the scene – is Alfie’s mother Rae.  Her mind is wandering, and her grasp of time and people is never strong, but she is still regularly producing her series of children’s books about Tom Dickon Harry.  This little chap has made her famous – and is based on Alfie himself, who (in turn) rose to notoriety after appearing in a documentary about the books when he was eighteen.  The irony is, Alfie explains, that he actually grew up with his father, who divorced Rae – and now he only sees his sister and half-sisters once a year, at Christmas.

Those sisters include loveable, scatty Hattie – who is forever making quilts, and babbling away without any real sense of boundaries.  Viv is less open, but still welcomes Gwen into the family.  Throw in two visiting sisters, in varying states of life-collapse, and things are bound to be interesting.  And Creake Hall is a wonderful setting.  Who doesn’t love an Elizabethan manor for a mysterious, slightly unsettling novel?  What makes it most unsettling is that the reader shares with Gwen the feeling that Alfie isn’t telling us everything… why was he so reluctant for her to stay?  What secrets does he hide?  What secrets are hidden by the house of silence?

Gwen is rather younger than Linda Gillard’s previous heroines – she is in her mid-twenties, in fact.  At no point does she come across as that young, though – which I thought might be a failing on Gillard’s part, until I got to the part where she asked Marek to guess her age:

“Older than you look.  Younger than you sound.”
One of the main aspects of Gwen’s personality is that she has had to be old before her years.  I suppose that’s what happens when you lose your entire family during adolescence – to drugs, alcohol, and AIDS – including finding your mother, dead, on Christmas.  Yup, Gwen has had it tough.

Oh, and Marek, you ask?  He is the gardener, known as Tyler to everyone (because every gardener has been known as that) and is warm, a good listener – he used to be a psychiatrist – and generally a safe place for Gwen to retreat.  He’s also (I quote Lyn’s review) ‘gorgeous, sexy, and irresistible.’  I have mental blocks for big age gaps with fictional couples – even Emma and Mr. Knightley is a combination which makes me wince a bit – so I’ll sidestep any potential entanglements here, and leave those quandaries to your imagination.  I will say that Marek reminds me a lot of Gavin from Gillard’s Emotional Geology, that he lives in a windmill (far from the only thing which reminded me of Jonathan Creek), and plays the cello – which led me in the direction of this beautiful piece.  It’s Rachmaninov’s Sonata in G Minor, Opus 17 No.3, Andante.  (Sorry, I have no idea how one is supposed to phrase the titles to music.)

I refuse to give any more of the plot away.  I’ve left it all deliberately vague, because it’s the sort of novel where the plot does matter.  One of the reasons it reminded me of an episode of Jonathan Creek, in the best possible way, is that you’re desperate to find out what happens – and twist upon twist come, so that everything is plausible but unguessable.  The ‘reveals’ are entirely consistent with people’s behaviour throughout the novel; character is never sacrificed to plot – indeed, the explanation of what has happened is also an explanation of why the members of this family are the way they are.

It’s all beautifully, addictively done.  I stayed up far later than I should, devouring the second half of the novel. I was unsure, in the beginning, whether it would match up to the compulsive quality of Gillard’s other novels, and the action doesn’t quite kick into gear until we’ve arrived at Creake Hall – but, after that, hold onto your hats.  It is a mark of Linda Gillard’s talent that her novels are both versatile and identifiable – no matter what genre she turns her hand to (and I believe her next was a paranormal romance), I would be able to recognise a Gillard at a hundred paces.  And, although she may be one of the new wave of successful Kindle authors, thank Heaven she’s found a way for the Kindless to enjoy the dizzying, thoughtful extravaganza that is House of Silence.



Others who got Stuck in this Book:


“House of Silence is a compulsively readable book. It’s a compelling story of family secrets & lies, set in a crumbling Elizabethan mansion at Christmas in the depths of a freezing Norfolk winter.” – Lyn, I Prefer Reading


“This is a book in which it is so easy to lose yourself, at once emotional and mysterious.” – Margaret, Books Please


“The book has romance, bubbling away underneath, it deals with mental health issues so effectively and considerately that you actually do not realise until reflecting back on the book.” – Jo, The Book Jotter

Star Gazing

StuckinaBook All , 3 Comments

I get sent quite a few ‘first novels’, so it’s a pleasant change to receive a novel which is the third from an author’s pen. Of course, I love seeing the first-offs too – but when Star Gazing by Linda Gillard arrived, I had the experiences of Emotional Geology and A Lifetime Burning to which to compare it. Plus, Linda has been an e-friend for a few years now, and it’s always lovely to hear from her.

I was in a position of knowledge when it came to Linda’s second novel, A Lifetime Burning. I wrote about it last year, and though there were obvious aspects of the book which I hadn’t experienced (shan’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say I might have a criminal record if I had experienced them) I am a twin and in a vicar’s family, and so could understand those. I’ve never been so impressed by any literary portrayal of being a twin – Linda understood it so well. I can only assume she has found a similar level of empathy and recognition with blindness. Marianne, the central character of Star Gazing, is blind.

Blind, but not a victim. Bolshy, is our Marianne – “crabbit”, to quote Keir. Keir is the man in the novel – an oil rigger who spends his time away from work living on Skye, he’s a heady mixture of shy and sensitive and rugged and… does he exist? Linda has said that she was intrigued by the idea of writing a hero who might not exist – since Marianne has to rely on her other senses, she can’t be sure that Keir isn’t a projection of her imagination, and the reader spends quite a few chapters equally unsure.

But I haven’t said much about Marianne, yet. She’s middle-aged, and has been blind since birth. A widower, she lives with her vampire-romantic-novel writing sister Louisa (sisters Marianne and Louisa… the influence of Jane Austen hovering somewhere, perhaps?) and is a very determined woman. I always have a little trouble with people who are desperate to be independent – the sort of person who complains that people are being ‘patronising’ to them – but perhaps that’s because I function best in a unit (back to the twin thing, mayhap). With Marianne, she has enough endearing features that I rarely wanted to throttle her. I can’t be cross with a woman who says “Pure Enid Blyton – a much maligned author, in my opinion.” My only criticism is that she so often mentions that she is blind. Her prerogative, I suppose, but I’m sure most visually impaired people can let the expression “You see what I mean” pass, without pointing out that they can’t…

Star Gazing uses three narrative focalisations – Marianne, Louisa, and a third person narrative. Linda uses this skilfully, as she has done before, and the transition from Marianne’s internal view to an external perspective highlights the smallness of Marianne’s world – as she says, her experience of it stretches only as far as she can hear, smell or touch. The success of Star Gazing must ultimately hinge on the story, and the portrayal of blindness. As I said, I can’t judge from my own experience – I’d love to hear from someone who can – but I was fairly convinced. It must be such a difficult task: how to describe the absence of sight from the perspective of one who doesn’t know what she hasn’t got? There is a strong theme of music throughout – I hardly knew any of the references, but visual things, especially scenery and natural phenomena, are often described to Marianne by their musical equivalent. The beautiful intricacy of a cobweb, for instance – which Marianne has only experienced as sticky and unpleasant – is compared to The Well-Tempered Clavier.

Star Gazing is not as ambitious or controversial as A Lifetime Burning – and consequently, where A Lifetime Burning was a great novel, Star Gazing is a good one. A very good one. It would be surprising if an author had two novels of A Lifetime Burning’s power in them, let alone consecutively. Star Gazing, though, demonstrates Linda Gillard’s continuing power as a storyteller, a creator of vivid and unusual characters, and a novelist who will hopefully soon get the recognition she deserves. I’m delighted that a fourth novel has already been written – can’t wait.

But a lifetime burning in every moment

StuckinaBook All , 11 Comments

Every now and then a book comes along which makes you think “wow”, and prevents the normal day-to-day activities taking place without a constant desire to be reading said book. It leads one to read whilst walking to work, often quite perilously, and sneak a copy under the desk in the library. This week such a book reared its head.

Back in one of my earliest posts, I asked people to suggest novels or plays with twins in – as a twin myself, it’s something I find endlessly interesting. Partly because the topic is fascinating, partly because I like discovering how accurate authors are in portraying twinship. Twinhood? Twinicity? Of course I can only compare to my own experience, so it’s not the most objective test. But it keeps me off the streets.

Anyway. A novel nobody mentioned back then was Linda Gillard’s A Lifetime Burning, but it is probably the most convincing portrayal of being a twin that I have ever read. Even more so than The Comedy of Errors. Then again, Topsy and Tim presented rather more verisimilitude than old Billybob. I don’t want to tell you too much about the plot of Gillard’s novel, for three reasons. Firstly, it will ruin genuine shocks and surprises which enhance the reading no end and add richness to the writing; secondly, Linda has said that she doesn’t really do plots – more characters to whom things happen; thirdly, it would sound ridiculous. I don’t mean that as a criticism at all – but a synopsis of the novel would make you think “wow, what a crazy amount of things happen to this family”, whereas reading the novel makes you think “Wow!”

So, not revealing the main plot points – but suffice it to say that the Dunbar family do not live uneventful lives. The novel focuses on Flora, whose funeral is witnessed in the opening pages, and flits between first and third persons, and many different times throughout her life. She is forceful, hopeful and often quite selfish, but with a disarming self-awareness – and great closeness with twin brother Rory. They are not identical personalities, nor are they wholly disparate (the two usual paths taken with twins in fiction) but rather complementing characters; individuals but intertwined.

Though the novel jumps all over the place, I never found it confusing – rather a path towards illumination and comprehension of the characters, understanding (rather than sanctioning) the way they act. Linda Gillard writes with lyrical intensity, beautiful prose which is powerful without being overly ‘flowery.’ I enjoyed her previous novel Emotional Geology, but this is leagues ahead of it – can’t recommend it enough. The subject matter isn’t uncontroversial, but nothing in A Lifetime Burning is gratuitous – and almost every other modern novelist I’ve read could take a leaf out of Gillard’s book.