Introducing July's Book of the Month:

HOUSE OF SILENCE by Linda Gillard



*Once again, Linda will be graciously joining us for discussion of her latest release.
Discussion will open July 24th. If possible, please PM your questions to Linda!

HOUSE OF SILENCE is now a best-selling Kindle e-book on Amazon, priced £1.90 ($2.99).
It sold 5000 copies in its first 2 months on sale. It continues to sell over a 100 copies a day.
Amazon UK
Amazon US

To read our thread about the release of House of Silence, please go here.


From Linda's website

"My friends describe me as frighteningly sensible, not at all the sort of woman who would fall for an actor. And his home. And his family."

Orphaned by drink, drugs and rock n’ roll, Gwen Rowland is invited to spend Christmas at her actor boyfriend Alfie's family home - a ramshackle Tudor manor in Norfolk. She's excited about the prospect of a proper holiday with a proper family, but soon after she arrives, Gwen notices something isn't quite right. Alfie acts strangely toward his family and is reluctant to talk about the past. Alfie's mother, a celebrated children's author, keeps to her room, living in a twilight world, unable to distinguish between past and present, fact and fiction. And then there's the enigma of an old family photograph...

When Gwen discovers fragments of forgotten family letters sewn into an old quilt, she starts to piece together the jigsaw of the past and realises there's much more to the family history than she's been told. It seems there are things people don’t want her to know.

And one of those people is Alfie.

Thanks, Laura. I'm really looking forward to it.

Can I remind members who don't own a Kindle that the Kindle app is free to download for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry - so if you're really keen, you could read it on one of these.

There are no plans to produce a print copy of the book but the e-book has now sold 9000 copies since April 2nd.

I am beyond excited that we'll be reading another book by Linda. I have it downloaded and ready to read on my kindle.

That is AWESOME Linda!!!

More good news for you good people...

I've just had a rejection from the last publisher to say No to my next novel, UNTYING THE KNOT, so I will be e-publishing that one on Kindle in September. (£1.90/$2.99)

The hero's tall, Scottish and gorgeous - if a little mad. What else do you need to know?...

This is the blurb to whet your appetite...

When love is not enough, who pays the price?… UNTYING THE KNOT, a bitter-sweet love story about the restoration of a ruined castle, a ruined marriage and two shattered lives.

"Wives are meant to stand by their man – army wives particularly. I didn’t. I walked away, from Magnus and Tullibardine Tower. Tully drained my husband’s love, energy and money for years. No mistress could have been more demanding, more all-consuming. In the end I stopped trying to compete. Given a choice between a romantic ruin, crumbling away on a Perthshire hillside and a struggling artist, crumbling away - not quite so romantically - in a Glasgow tenement, which do you think a war hero with an over-developed sense of duty and an irrational desire to atone would choose?

And he did.

So I said I was leaving.

And I did.

Everyone makes mistakes, but I sometimes think I’ve made more than most. Marrying Magnus was one of them. But the biggest mistake I ever made was divorcing him."

I can't wait to talk about this book! I loved it. It twists and turns and it is funny, tragic, and uplifting all at the same time. I have been recommending Linda's books to all my friends and have been considering gifting it to everyone I know with a Kindle. It is such a great read.

Now Linda, I am ready for more!!!

Don't forget to submit questions to Linda for this month's book House of Silence.

I am really looking forward to discussing this book I'm going to re-read it this weekend - (after stealing iPad from husband) - in anticipation for chat with Linda!

I think maybe I'd better re-read it too - I wrote it quite a long time ago!

I hope you won't mind me posting a day early but I have some time today and I'm not sure I will tomorrow, so I thought I'd answer some of the Qs I've already been asked by TwilightTINK.... (Thanks, Tink!)

Her first Q was....
Where did the idea come from for the character Alfie? I love that he isn't as he seems.

I went back to my notes to see how HoS started and on the first page (dated May 2007) there exists a draft of the first page of the novel, pretty much as it reads in the finished book. But I’d already done a lot of thinking by the time I wrote that.

HoS began with a family story that I had known for many years and around which I decided to weave another story. (My mother told me the family story and HoS is dedicated to her.)

This is the real family story… My mother was one of 4 rather neglected daughters. Her vain, selfish and unloving mother miscarried a fifth child - a much wanted son - when she fell downstairs. It's questionable whether my grandmother ever got over it. In her final demented years she rambled in anguish about "the baby" being taken away. Her daughters assumed she was referring to the lost son.

I grew up with this story and it must have lodged in my brain because when I was thinking about ideas for a 4th novel I found myself asking what might have happened if my grandmother had actually refused to acknowledge the baby was lost?… I was interested in the idea of people creating their own fictions which then become real in their own eyes. (Obviously this is something you grapple with on a daily basis as a writer, so it was a natural step to think of making Rae an author.) I was also interested in the idea of colluding with other people’s fictions (which is what you have to do up to a point with young children, the demented elderly and people with Alzheimer’s.)

So I started off with the idea of an imaginary child (in much the same way that I started with an “imaginary” hero in STAR GAZING), then moved on to who could impersonate the imaginary child and why? (I’d like to point out that at this stage I hadn’t read Josephine Tey’s BRAT FARRAR, which bears some resemblance to HoS – though some readers have said they think HoS is better!) So of course Alfie had to be an actor. And I know all about actors, because I used to be one.

Like Hattie, Alfie wrote himself. He was one of the easiest characters I’ve ever written and one of my favourites – possibly the favourite after A LIFETIME BURNING’s Rory. (And in some respects they’re quite similar – even physically similar, which is rather odd.)

I think I was also influenced by an excellent (now quite old) film, BEST LAID PLANS which starred Alessandro Nivola. I won’t tell you much about the film because it’s got a terrific plot, but the actor and that role also fed into Alfie. The young Nivola was always my physical template for Alfie.

I’m going to run TINK’s next 2 Qs together as they cover some of the same ground….

I love the clues that are laid out like easter eggs for the reader to decipher. When you wrote this wonderful book, did you already have it laid out either on paper or in your head as to how you wanted it to go? The eggs are so wonderfully written and they come together so nicely that I was curious how you managed it?

Gwen is a sharp cookie! I love that she is artistic with her fabrics. All your characters are wonderfully artistic. Was this written before or after Emotional Geology (which also involves a woman who works with fabrics)?



EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY was begun in 1999. HoS was begun in 2007. I thought it was OK to re-visit the craft after all those years. But Gwen was interested in patchwork because that was what I needed for the plot – a way of the truth being revealed piecemeal. My idea for the plot was that it should have many layers, all of which as they were revealed, appeared to be The Solution, but in fact they weren’t.

It was very hard work plotting this book. It really was brain-straining, trying to work out who knew what. No one knew everything, so it was hard keeping tabs on that. And I was always worried that readers would guess there had never been a baby. It was challenging writing the flashback to the conversation that Hattie overheard so that it worked in 2 ways and meant 2 different things.

As a slight digression I'd like to say, I’ve been quite upset by some reviews of HoS on Amazon (there was also a blog review) that have described the book (in a rather condescending manner) as lightweight and undemanding. This astonished me. A major character has grown up thinking she killed a baby. At the age of 35 she discovers not just that she didn’t commit this appalling deed, but that the baby she is supposed to have killed never even existed! This is the core of the book. Some of the rest of the core is a boy who saw his mother regularly beaten and eventually beaten to death. Another core element is another child who comes down on Christmas morning to find her mother dead of a drugs overdose. And that's before you include Marek accidentally killing a small child in a road accident.

Lightweight?!

The book is about neglected, unloved and traumatised children and what they grow up to be. It just goes to show the pernicious nature of genre marketing. The novel looks like cosy crime/Gothic chick lit but the subject matter is – I would humbly suggest – more emotionally and morally challenging than Ian McEwan’s ATONEMENT, but on a par (in subject matter if not writing skill) with Du Maurier’s REBECCA.

One day I'll feel calm enough to be amused by the fact that some readers are unable to distinguish between tone and content.

But not yet.

And another Q from TINK...

The sisters are all wonderfully rich characters too. They are so very different from each other. Who is your favorite and why?

I’m glad you thought the sisters were all different. I worked hard to make them different and that’s not easy to do when characters are subsidiary and similar in age. I found photo templates for all of them which helped me keep them separate in my mind.

Hattie is undoubtedly my favourite, although I'm very fond of them all, even Fanny - especially Fanny, who I suppose wormed her way into my affections much as Rory Dunbar did in A LIFETIME BURNING, despite her unappealing and selfish character.

I find it hard to say why Hattie is my favourite. She is a sort of “twin” to Alfie. They aren’t brother and sister, but I feel that they're "twinned" in a way. (There are similarities to the young Flora and Rory in ALB don't you think?) Both have spent their lives searching for love and acceptance, concealing huge secrets. Two lonely children grew up to be lonely adults, but in both cases they developed a rather sad appealing charm along the way, that wins them friends and affection, but can never satisfy because it’s based on a lie, on not being fully known for what they are – in Hattie’s case, a “murderer” and in Alfie’s case, a complete fraud.

I found Hattie’s honesty very endearing. (One woman’s honesty is another woman’s tactlessness!) One of the first things Hattie says to Gwen when they meet at Creake Hall is, “Take no notice of me, Gwen. I’m a bad person - I can’t do anything right. But I mean well.” Hattie has grown up believing she is a bad person, the archetypal bad person – the murderer of her baby brother. So she’s constantly trying to atone.

I think Hattie is one of the saddest, most poignant characters I’ve written, but she’s also quite funny. (Well, I find her funny!) I think perhaps that’s a combination that appeals to me.

But it’s perfectly possible that Hattie is my favourite of the sisters just because she was so easy to write! She wrote herself. I don’t know where she came from. She was one of those characters like Garth the Goth in STAR GAZING who started off as a small, quirky idea, then grew into a major force in the novel.

Linda, thank you so much for answering my questions.

I can't imagine anyone thing this book is anything but intrigue and masterful but then if we all liked the same book, there would only be one book!

I can't imagine trying to juggle the details of the story. It was hard enough trying to work out the 'who dunnit' aspects, as you say-who knew what when. I had some pieces but some where a complete surprise.

I hadn't thought of Hattie as the "twin" to Alfie but now the you mention it, I think I see what you were talking about.

I loved the connection between Gwen and Hattie. Actually I loved Gwen. She is patient, loving, non-judgmental, and really did her level best to get to know Alfie's 'siaters'. Actually, in the ways that count, they were brother and sisters. The dynamic was so familiar to me as I come from a large family.

No matter some reviews, I loved ot!

It really interesting to hear the real life genesis of HOS.
Here are a few more queries:

1. This work seems very much a "sins of the Fathers (and Mothers)" with Rae's father rejecting her for not being what he desired: a male heir and then Rae rejecting her daughters for the same reason followed by the older sisters keeping a dead child "alive," leading to Hattie's terrible misunderstanding and finally, Alfie and Gwen's own parental nightmares. Were all these lies and fake lives a way for the people involved a way to avoid the pain of reality or are the participants too damaged to make better decisions for their own lives. (Does that make sense?)

2. I would choose Marek as Gwen did because they seemed to have an instant deep connection plus, I liked his quiet strength, willingness to help others in pain, and his musical soul. However, I find Alfie very appealing("sex on legs") and felt sorry for him even though he did lie to Gwen and abuse her trust which was a deal breaker. Was their whole relationship a role he played or was it mostly honest? Was he too damaged by his own mother to have an genuine relationship?

I'll answer the 2nd Q first as it's easier...


Alfie is 100% genuine in his feelings for Gwen. That's his tragedy (and that's why he cracks me up.) He knows he has to come clean about who he is and what he's doing at Creake Hall but he just can't make himself do it. He fears Gwen will stop loving him - that everyone will. So he just hopes he can bluff his way through it.

But Alfie almost expects to lose Gwen. Nothing he has is real. Anything real, he loses. Fear of loss cripples him morally and destroys his relationship with Gwen. He doesn't trust her with the truth and she doesn't trust him because she senses he isn't telling the truth. It's terribly sad. Gwen might actually have been able to cope with the truth (though I suspect not as she'd had so much deceit to deal with as a kid.)

Btw do I suggest anywhere that Alfie was damaged by his mother? I don't remember doing that. She died when he was very young. The man who lived with them (who probably wasn't A's father) was the one who would have inflicted the damage - physical and emotional. I think it would have been the memory of loving his mother that made Alfie a natural for getting on with all the Creake Hall women. He was looking for mother figures and of course a surrogate family. He and Gwen are both incomplete but they cannot complete each other. The novel opens with Gwen saying: "I used to wonder if Alfie chose me because I was an orphan and an only child. Was that part of the attraction? I came unencumbered, with no family. We were kindred spirits in a way. Detached, self-centred, yet both obsessed with the past. Our past. The difference was, I had no family and Alfie did."

But of course he didn't. They sense each other's incompleteness and that explains their rapport. But it isn't enough to make the relationship work.