Book Review: In the Quiet by Eliza Henry-Jones

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I feel like the subtext of this book can be summed up by these lyrics: “You love her, but she loves him, and he loves somebody else, you just can’t win. And so it goes, till the day you die. This thing they call love, it’s gonna make you cry.”

Cate and her husband, Bass, seemed to have had what everyone wishes for: shared goals, shared love, a true partnership. Everyone around them, however, is embedded in various stages of unrequited or inappropriate infatuation and relationship struggles. And part of the reason for this is that Cate is dead. I’m not giving anything away. She narrates the whole book and reveals this in the first sentence.

Bass is devastated but struggles to express it. Their teenage children, twin boys Rafferty and Cameron and daughter Jessa, mask their grief variously with anger, nonchalance and neuroses. Laura, Cate’s best friend, focuses on caring for Cate’s horses, despite her own family problems. Bea, Cate’s sister, wants to help but no-one seems to appreciate that.

There are a lot more people in this book. It’s set in a country town where everybody knows everybody and everybody pops up here and there every so often, but not so often that when they reappeared I didn’t ask, “Who were they again?” It took me until about half way through to get them all straight in my head.

Not a great deal happens in terms of plot. It’s more of a character study. But despite being told by the person who should know all the other characters better than anyone else, Cate doesn’t offer much in the way of insight. It’s due to the fact she’s dead, we’re told, and she can’t remember things the way she used to. She’s fuzzy around the edges and therefore so is the story.

The reason for Cate’s death at such a young age is concealed until close to the end of the book but it’s not really that important in the grand scheme of things. It actually feels a bit like an afterthought.

In the Quiet is a hybrid piece of literature: part eulogy, part romance and part emancipation. The Lovely Bones minus the murder. We Need to Talk about Kevin minus the murderous son. Just like those novels, it’s beautifully written.

But it lacks the gut punch that those other two novels deliver. “You will weep,” Nikki Gemmell promises on the front cover. I didn’t. It won’t leave you stunned. In time, it will just leave you. But you won’t regret it.

3 stars

First published on Goodreads 19 May 2019