The Silence Project

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Although I always wanted to write novels, it took me many years to create the time and space in my life to do it. However, throughout two decades working as a lawyer and spending time living overseas, I always made time for reading. Reading was my first love and is my most enduring love. It is impossible for me to imagine what my life would be like without books. To know that I have written a novel that people want to read and recommend, a book that will be discussed on the radio and will find a place on the shelves of libraries, just like the one I spent so much time in for the first eighteen years of my life, fills me with gratitude, a certain amount of trepidation but above all, an enormous joy.” Get involved Carole Hailey’s novel ‘The Silence Project’ is published by Atlantic Books and is available from all good bookshops. On 31 October 2011 I watched my mother burn to death. It wasn’t an accident. She built her own pyre. She doused it in petrol. She climbed up and stood with her legs apart, bracing herself. I didn’t know what she was planning. I assumed it was another publicity stunt, which of course it was, just not in the way that I was expecting.

The book takes a particularly interesting turn when the narrator begins to question the nature of her work in Congo and I think it does a pretty good job of showing nuance where somebody does something that's harmful to others with the best intentions, and how they cope with the guilt when they realise that actually their actions had an unspoken and downright racist motive. The BBC Radio 2 Book Club announced on 24 January that its new home is on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. Without any clear guidance now that Rachel is gone, the Community has grown into a global enterprise and powerhouse, but their original mission seems to have drastically changed. But since Rachel never spoke or wrote down her plans after her suicide, this has given the Community enough free reign to do as they wish under her name and under the guise that this is part of Rachel's grand plans for the Community. I was drawn to this book as I wanted to find out why a mother would suddenly leave her husband and daughter and move into a tent at the bottom of the garden and never speak again. Communication for the rest of her life was via letters and written messages. Eventually, Rachel abandons being a mother altogether for what she deems a higher purpose. This will sit differently with each reader. Are mothers mothers above individuals? Does a utilitarian sense of purpose override personal responsibilities? Are our answers to these the same for women and men both?While this story is about Emilia, it is also much more profound than that. It tells of how a simple action from Rachel gradually gathers momentum, attention and publicity. All this is going on while Emilia is growing up as a teen than as an adult. In the future setting the author brings a different turn than I expected, but it does actually work well within the story. It has been eleven years since my mother’s death, but the questions never stop. Everyone remains just as fascinated by her as they have always been and believes this gives them the right to ask me anything. What was Rachel of Chalkham like when she was plain Rachel Morris? How do I feel having the architect of the Event as my mother? Am I proud of her? Ashamed of her? Do I feel any guilt about what she did? Question after question, year after year, until I have had to accept that the questions aren’t going away. On the contrary, my silence seems to fuel their obsession ( just like her silence fuelled everything that happened). This is an exceptional book. I was intrigued by the blurb and hooked after the first chapter. Initially the protagonists mum Rachel comes across as uncaring and not empathic. We see her cruelly joking with her daughter about the identity of her biological father, gorging herself on stories of large-scale human tragedies, and demanding her family runs around after her when she retreats in silence to her tent. However, when we later hear her reasons for doing so, in the form of 2 letters to her daughter, we see an entirely different sides to her. A principled woman, who was overwhelmed by the futility of life, wanted a kinder, fairer world for her child, and subsequently made a promise of silence, that she keeps to her dying day. She's begun writing her memoirs with the help of the notebooks her Mother left behind after she quietly burned herself to death along with thousands of her followers. The Silence Project is going to tell the real story for the first time. In such a dissonant and polarised world, Rachel who relinquishes her voice for silence has left herself entirely open to interpretation.

This book - as the author says - is a blend of fact and fiction. In places I had to stop and think where one ended and the other started. It is an amazing, heart-rending bumpy ride which shows how one person, with one act, could change the world. There are so many truths in the book, mixed in with so much deceit. We need to keep our wits about us - and listen! One notion I had when I finished is that it's never revealed what Rachel's plan really was, other than the wishy-washy notion that people need to 'be silent and listen to/hear each other more'. But to what end? What are we listening for? Who do we need to listen to? It never explains why Rachel was obsessed with disasters or why she decided to finally pitch a tent and never speak again. It is also a very loud message about the power of words, both silent and spoken, and about the choices we make, since consequences have their own ripples and sound. Cardiff-based novelist Carole Hailey’s newly published, debut novel has just been chosen as a Radio 2 Book Club choice and is already generating enormous excitement. We are delighted to be able to publish this extract. It's an especially interesting novel to read in these times, as we witness the cult of the individual sparking right-wing waves in many countries. While the Community's goals - to save the world (from climate change, overpopulation and poverty) - are more worthy, this book nevertheless asks valid questions about cults, about power politics and manipulation, about female empowerment and about utilitarianism/consequentialism: does the end ever fully justify the means?It’s dystopian, but real in a strange way and as well as being escapist fiction, it’s relevant. I really enjoyed this and heartily recommend it to anyone looking for something a little different, but with substance. I just can’t rave enough about how Carole writes – it’s so engaging and makes you wish the story continued on endlessly so you can learn more about what happens next and the various character motivations. On Emilia Morris’s thirteenth birthday, her mother Rachel moves into a tent at the bottom of their garden. From that day on, she never says another word. Inspired by her vow of silence, other women join her and together they build the Community. Eight years later, Rachel and thousands of her followers around the world burn themselves to death.

There are key scenes and reports of outright horror that bring this a feel of historical accuracy and immediacy, Emilia bringing together real-world events (from her version of our world) with her personal views and history. This isn’t a book for women, it just happens to be about some of them.

Allen & Unwin Australia’s leading independent publisher of smart fiction and non-fiction, published in the UK through Atlantic Books. I found it difficult to remember at certain points that this event did not happen and at times I questioned whether I need to Google this. It was madness! 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. For me, this half of the book was like a literary pass the parcel of idea explosions; nothing you or I could expect or can/could see coming develops, but I realised that in fact it’s all about perspectives and Carole has honed them, so they are razor sharp in their inception and so divinely subtle, its almost with hindsight I realised all the clues are/were in front of me, plus there are some more positives in Emilia’s life to uncover. See, I said this novel is a work of total genius…now I’m not giving much away about the second part of the novel, purely because I believe that the impact and elements of this story, need to be revealed as you read it and it will leave you open mouthed at the persuasive and pervasive plans of the Community and the almost benign way it moves to more and more radical concepts and the putrefaction of Rachel’s original beliefs, that being silent allows us to listen and hear more, instead, this becomes a twisted ideology and Emilia feels that breaking her own silence is the only way to combat the poison. For the last fifteen years he has devoted his energy to the importance of silence in the world. His work is grounded in the founding principles