I’m grateful to Nadia Hanafi and Philippe Kerampran for their kind support with my author website, to Jon Bent for his input to the Author’s Note, to Barb Taylor and Alecia Bof for their help during the final edits, to Charlie at Urban Writers’ Retreat for her faultless hospitality, and to Alistair at Rye Books for sourcing me so many inspirational novels over the years. Thanks to the other three corners of the Book Square for knowing when to ask how the book was going and when to change the subject. Thanks to Writerful Books for the sensitivity read, and also to Stephen Buckley for his generous insight on the more sensitive sections of the book.

Thanks to Dad and Gillie for reading the early drafts and being so positive and encouraging. Thanks to Mum for reading and for helping in so many other ways, and for always believing I could do it. Thanks to my sister Sarah for being fabulous and for her ground-level marketing efforts. And thanks of course to my amazing children who can’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing this book, and have been my proud champions at each step of the way.

Finally, thanks beyond measure to my husband David, who has always understood and encouraged my need to write. The Silence has benefited from his ‘very Australian’ perspective, not to mention his eagle eye for continuity errors. I doubt it would have been written at all without his love and support, or his willingness to give me the space and time I needed.

I should finish by saying that among the many resources I used to research this book, the National Library of Australia’s excellent web site was the most useful and exhaustive. I returned again and again to their oral history section, which is keeping alive the experiences of people whose voices might not otherwise have been heard. I’ve tried to do justice to those experiences within the limits of this work of fiction. Any errors or inconsistencies are entirely my own.

Questions for Reading Groups

1. What do you think the ‘Silence’ of the title refers to?
2. The author writes from multiple points of view in the novel, switching point of view in each chapter. Do you think this is an effective way of telling the story? Do you think any perspectives are missing?
3. Louisa tells Isla, ‘We were going to leave all the old ways behind in England. It felt adventurous, like anything was possible.’ How is the experience of migration depicted in The Silence and how does it play into the problems in Louisa and Joe’s marriage?
4. The word ‘sorry’ recurs in the novel, and apologies sometimes come belatedly, or from the wrong person. Sometimes they are withheld entirely. Why do you think the word ‘sorry’ is important in The Silence?
5. Do you have any sympathy for Steve as a character? If so, how do you reconcile this with what he does?
6. Why do you think Isla’s grandma asks her to whisper her worst secret in her ear?
7. Andrea Walker says, ‘My mum used to say, [Steve] doesn’t take kids from nice families’. Isla thinks, ‘this might be funny if it were not so unspeakably sad.’ What do you think Isla means by this?
8. At the end of the novel, Isla decides to remember her father as ‘not all bad.’ How is memory significant in The Silence?