Silent Noon

by Trilby Kent

September 1953. Fourteen-year-old Barney Holland is promised a fresh start when he is offered a place at a boarding school on the remote North Sea island of Lindsey. Instead, he is shunned by his peers both for his status as a charity pupil and for being the replacement of a recently deceased student, the popular Cray. The arrival of Belinda Flood, a housemaster's daughter stigmatized by her expulsion from another school, provides Barney with an unexpected ally. Both outsiders soon fall under the influence of charismatic senior pupil Ivor Morrell, who reigns over the forbidden corners of the school.A gruesome find and the friendship with a local woman rumored to have been a wartime collaborator draw the three into an increasingly dangerous web of personal and social shame. Gripped by mounting horror at his discovery of secrets harbored by the isolated school community, Barney personifies the struggle of a young peacetime generation finding its way out of the shadow of war.

Genres: Historical Fiction

317 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 4, 2013

About the author

Trilby grew up in cities in Canada, the United States and England. After studying History at Oxford University and Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, training as a maps specialist at a London auction house and pursuing journalistic work from Belgium to the Philippines, she began writing fiction for adults and young adults. This led to an AHRC studentship to complete a PhD in Creative Writing, which produced her second adult novel. Her second book for children, STONES FOR MY FATHER, won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Africana Book Award in 2012 and has since been included on CBC Writes’ 100 YA Books That Make You Proud To Be Canadian. Her third novel for young readers, ONCE, IN A TOWN CALLED MOTH will be published in September 2016.

Trilby now lives in Toronto, where she continues to write fiction, review books for the Globe and Mail and Quill and Quire, teach creative writing at the University of Toronto and Humber College, and freelance as a writer and editor.

Reviews

[Bookread2day · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story starts in september 1953 Barney Holland is promised a fresh start at Carding house boarding school on the remote of the North Sea on the island of Lindsey. The boys there get up to some naughty behaviour. Barney is bright and makes up some really good poems.A dead baby is found in the earth but no one is sure how long the dead baby has been there or who buried the baby in the earth.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

On reading this I assumed the book was aimed at fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds but it’s really not although, that said, I guess it depends on your fourteen- or fifteen-year-old. My gut feeling is that the book would be a bit too … ‘subtle’ is the word I kept coming back to as I was reading this book, but I think perhaps ‘understated’ might be a better choice. On the surface we have a set up for an Enid Blyton-style adventure: an island, a creepy old school, a triumvirate of young amateur detectives and more secrets than I would know where to start listing; there’s even some ginger beer. Of course had it been written by Enid Blyton it would probably have been called The Mystery of Lindsey Island rather than Silent Noon which isn’t in my opinion a very memorable title. After the book’s climax there are silences everywhere but you have to cover a lot of ground before you get there. In many respects, as with any good detective novel, most of the things we don’t know we really don’t need to know and the important things get swept along with everything else. Time is an important theme in this book although you don’t realise that at first.

Another thing about this book: you think you’re reading one thing when you’re actually reading something else entirely. This is a book about systems: social, national and political. The school and the island are both microcosms of society. Just as the boarding school is a common trope so is the new transfer student. He provides the perfect proxy for us readers: he knows nothing; we know nothing; we learn together. The school, however, is only one group Barney finds himself having to fit in with and that’s what life’s like. That along the way he should lose some friends and have his ideals sullied is just life. And life sucks.

Read my full review on my blog here.

[Theresa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this book up in a garden centre, 2 for £5 and wished I hadn't as both books turned out to be a bit dire. I am afraid I could not get to grips with this book at all. A book either grabs me in the first few pages or I am out and I was out. Very muddled writing ,too many characters to come to grips with and I just got totally frustrated with it.

[Glenys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Different!
Teenage boys growing up in a remote and rather mysterious location surrounded by secrets and mysteries.
An odd place for a boarding school and boys from varied backgrounds - all the usual bullying but something more sinister as well.
A bit of a challenge for the reader to 'read between the lines' at times.

[Kaye Arnold · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story of a boy's school on an island of Britain. This book follows a year in Barney's school-life, as he experiences unusual feelings, bullying, and a bit of adventure. An entertaining read, although not a favourite.

[Sarah Staunton-lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn’t quite deliver
Unrequited love but from whom?
Past secrets - but which were real
If it was a film it would be black and white with lots of people looking out into the distance

[Felicity Terry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alas a read that simply didn't altogether do it for me. Perhaps too much information on the back cover or perhaps I was simply expecting too much - I was certainly expecting/hoping for a much more chilling, suspense filled tale - either way, having read the book I was left feeling oddly disappointed.

An OK read but very disjointed and with no real sense of time nor place as whilst the author admirably portrayed the isolation of this island community I'm afraid that overall the minute details of life, of the alienation, the loneliness, the power struggles, could have applied to any number of boarding schools in any number of places throughout history.

As for the characters. Though fascinated by the burgeoning sexuality of certain characters (something I think the author could have made more of), without exception I found myself unable to connect to a single one of them. Confused by the fact that they were called by both first and last names, that some of them seemed almost surplus to the story and were only mentioned occasionally, I'm afraid that apart from the main characters it was all too easy to loose track of just who was who.

Copyright: Petty Witter @ Pen and Paper.
Disclaimer: An ARC copy read and reviewed on behalf of the publisher, Alma Books,I was merely asked for my honest opinion, no financial compensation was asked for nor given