Review of The Silent Years: Mother – by Jennifer R. Povey
Jennifer R. Povey was born in the city of Robin Hood – Nottingham, England. The daughter of a professional musician, she graduated from the University of York with a degree in Archaeology. Two years later she emigrated to the United States and married her American husband, Gregory. She is now an American citizen.
It could be the end of life as we know it as a deadly virus called The Silence begins sweeping the country. This story moves relentlessly — and chillingly — through a doomsday scenario that’s portrayed stunningly by author Jennifer Povey.
It looks hopeless as Dorothy and her family take refuge on a small survivalist farm her brother owns in central North Carolina. They begin to wonder if they have what it takes to beat the odds and make it through this nightmare. Only ten percent of the population is immune to the virus, but they hope they’ve put enough distance between themselves and those infected to live.
Povey keeps the reader in the palm of her hand as her protagonist Dorothy alternates worrying about her family and taking firm steps to protect them. In a particularly telling moment, she describes the compassion of her eldest son and his fierce need to protect his brother, and how it characterized him:
“(He)was one of the ones who became soldiers and firemen.”
In a grim moment, a stranger, infected with the virus, has approached the compound and tried to gain entrance. He is shot dead. And even though he has degenerated into the zombie state indicative of last-stage victims of the disease, Povey’s description of him is poignant:
“For a long moment, it lay there. It, not he. The face showed no fear, no recognition of death. It was oddly slack, as if even in life it had possessed no animation.”
Things truly go from bad to worse as characters we have become invested in fall victim to The Silence. It seems no one — or nearly no one — is immune to the disease, and some hard choices befall the family as they struggle in this bleak new reality.
This is not your everyday postapocalyptic adventure yarn. It’s a gritty imagining of just how bad things could be if one military biochemical experiment goes awry someday. There will undoubtedly be consequences of the gravest kind. And Povey brings us up close and personal with them.
I won’t give away the ending — suffice to say it’s unexpected and really not an ending in the truest sense as this novella is intended to be the first of three to be written by this talented author.
I did find myself wishing more time had been taken to stretch out suspenseful scenes and instances in which certain characters abruptly disappear in the space of a few paragraphs. But, since the book was intentionally pared down to novella length, perhaps something had to wind up being cut.
Nevertheless, I found the book to be expertly written and well-edited. I look forward to reading the next installment. I give The Silent Years: Mother five stars, and welcome Povey to the ranks of novelist par excellence.
