The Silence by Katy Eachus
On those rare occasions when Abby allowed herself to think
about her cousin Philippa, she always saw her as a girl of fourteen who was
very much alive. A girl who could burp the National Anthem (well, the first
couple of lines), hurl herself off rocks, catch scorpions in her bare hands,
hold her breath until she fainted and who always slept with one arm straight up
in the air. A girl who pulled faces behind people's back, rolled her eyes, did
impressions and spurted her drink over everyone when she laughed. Being with
Philippa meant laughing until you were sick, sharing your deepest, most
thrilling secrets, keeping each other awake with disgusting jokes and
gut-wrenching stories. And of course planning the perfect murder.
She never thought of Philippa as she had last seen her. How
could she have done that and carried on a normal life? How could she have
finished school, got a degree, gone to work, married, done all the things
normal people did? So much easier to think it had never happened.
After all, it was impossible to imagine now, just as it was
impossible to recapture the blinding heat, the scorching dust clouds that
peppered your legs and the incessant nagging of the cicadas that drilled into
your skull. Impossible to think of the place existing without them. Of life
going on just as it had before they had arrived. But it must. People drinking
in the bars below the villa or lazing in deckchairs around the swimming pool
must look up into those forested hills hundreds of times in a day and have no
idea what they concealed.
Brambles as thick as Abby's arm must have grown up by now
over the place where she last saw Philippa, spreading their fingers around the
stones. Acacias with their dagger-like thorns would have muscled in to form a
second line of defence. Landslips would have showered down mud and rocks on top
- erasing it, erasing Philippa, erasing everything.
“If you keep lying about something it becomes the truth,”
Philippa had said.
So perhaps it really hadn’t happened. Because if it had
surely by now someone would have broken through the woods, clawed back the
brambles, pulled apart the stones, and they’d have found her wouldn’t they?
A girl without a face.
Critique by Ayisha Malik
This
is a promising opening page, with some evocative writing and good use of descriptive
language. The author has a strong foundation for a potentially gripping read,
but there are some issues – particularly relating to Point of View and Show
Don’t Tell, which are affecting Characterisation, along with some more minor
observations – that could be developed to make this an even more engaging
read.
Essentially
the opening page is telling the reader two things:
1. Something terrible, involving a murder, has happened.
2. The protagonist is trying to
forget about it.
We
expect that the novel will be fraught with emotional conflict for Abby, while
the mystery as to what actually happened unravels, providing a tense interplay
between the narrative arc and character arc. As it stands, the tone and style,
to begin with, feels rather chatty for the story that’s being told. However, Philippa’s
character comes across strongly, helping us to invest in the emotional dynamic
set up between the protagonist (presumably Abby) and Philippa. The line, ‘And of course planning the perfect murder’,
is both sinister and intriguing: whose murder? Why? What happened?
In some
ways Philippa overshadows Abby – the opening has resonances of Rebecca: the way a character, long dead,
impacts upon the characters who are trying to escape their ghost. Because
Philippa is already coming across so well, I’d suggest that we have a better
sense of Abby – after all, we assume it will be her struggle that we engage
with throughout the story. In order to do this the author could ground us more
firmly in Abby’s perspective, and also implement more Show Don’t Tell. I’d
recommend employing a closer third person narrative. This is a good way of
allowing the reader to experience events as Abby does, but also allows for
another viewpoint in the story, should it be needed. However, any authorial
perspective should be avoided as it can jar for the reader, forcing them out of
the story.
It
is fine to have Abby as a rather benign figure, overpowered by Philippa
– this also provides the author with plenty of opportunity for Abby to
grow as a character as the story progresses. However, the author does need to
pepper the opening with some sense of who Abby is, even if the things she says
or does are rather prosaic, because we know, after all, that she will be
anything but.
A
more ‘in-scene’ setting could help with this and should also prevent too much
Telling. We learn that Abby has gone on to have a ‘normal’ life post-Philippa,
but can we witness Abby’s interaction with her husband/family? This should Show
us Abby’s family situation, adding colour to her character to create a stronger
emotional arc and raising the stakes for our protagonist. We could get a far better
sense of how Abby is battling to believe that whatever has happened didn’t
actually happen – going about her daily activity, pushing back thoughts of her
cousin to heighten her sense of denial.
There
is some lovely descriptive writing: the ‘blinding
heat’ and brambles ‘spreading their
fingers around the stone’, portray a feeling of claustrophobia that Abby
must be experiencing. However, it feels rather authorial at the moment and I
wonder why it’s impossible for Abby to ‘recapture
the blinding heat’? It would be more effective if we witnessed her
experiencing the past in a more visceral way, thereby increasing the tension
and conflict.
There
are some issues of clarity. A stronger sense of setting and where we are in time
should help distinguish the past from the present. For example, it says, ‘Impossible to think of the place existing
without them’. What place is the author talking about? Is it separate to
the one where Abby is now? Does she still live near the forest? The contrasting
dark imagery with the deckchairs and swimming pools works well, but a closer
character POV here would help. For example, is Abby looking at this idyllic
scene – if so, then this could be made clearer. Also, who’s ‘them’? This feels authorial and, again,
if we were grounded firmly in Abby’s POV, it should prevent any confusion.
Because
the mystery being set up and the descriptive language is already very
evocative, the author should avoid any tendency to overwrite. For example:
‘Brambles as thick as Abby's arm must have
grown up by now over the place where she last saw Philippa, spreading their
fingers around the stones. Acacias with their dagger-like thorns would have
muscled in to form a second line of defence. Landslips would have showered down
mud and rocks on top.’
The
last line could be edited out, as the preceding images are already effective in
denoting a sense of foreboding. On another quite minor note: the second
paragraph is repetitive as well as Telling. We already know how Abby thinks of
Philippa so we don’t need to be told, ‘She
never thought of Philippa as she had last seen her.’
We
aren’t given much dialogue, and when we are, it’s very effective, giving us
further insight into Philippa’s character:
‘If you keep lying about something it
becomes the truth,’ Philippa had said.
But
I wonder, using a closer perspective, if we could have a stronger sense of Abby
remembering this, and its effect on her?
The
final paragraph and line is particularly evocative. The reader is left to
imagine a resurrection of some sort, fighting its way through the brambles and
stones. Here, again, we could be more grounded in Abby’s POV. The author could
really heighten the tension and sense of Abby’s past creeping up on her by
immersing us in her perspective: a battle between remembering and forgetting,
the past and the present, the living and the dead.
In
conclusion, this is a strong piece of writing, and I’d urge the author to
consider using a closer character POV and implementing more Show Don’t Tell in
order for us to get a stronger sense of Abby’s character, and more clarity in
terms of setting and time period.
I
wish the author the best of luck with developing this promising piece.
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