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When We Were Silent
A Novel
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4.3 • 35 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Tense and unsettling. . . The reality is even more shocking than we imagined.”—New York Times Book Review
“Suspenseful and beautifully written” —The Guardian
An outsider threatens to expose the secrets at an elite private school in this suspenseful debut novel for readers of My Dark Vanessa and Dare Me
Louise Manson is the newest student at Highfield Manor, Dublin’s most exclusive private school. It seems nearly perfect: the high arched window alcoves and tall granite pillars, the overspill of lilac at the front gate and the immaculate playing fields, the giggling students, the dusty, oak-lined library, and the dark, festering secret she has come to expose.
At first, Lou’s working-class status makes her the consummate outsider, though all that changes when she is befriended by the beautiful and wealthy Shauna Power. But Lou finds out that even Shauna is caught up in Highfield’s web, and her time there ends with a lifeless body sprawled at her feet.
Thirty years later, Lou has rebuilt her life after the harrowing events of the so-called “Highfield Affair,” when she gets a shocking phone call. Ronan Power, Shauna’s brother, is a high-profile lawyer bringing a lawsuit against the school. And he needs Lou to testify.
Now with a daughter and career to protect, the last thing Lou wants is for Highfield Manor to be back in her life. But to finally free herself and others, she has to confront her past, go to battle once more, and discover, for once and for all, what really happened at Highfield. Powerful and compelling, When We Were Silent is an unputdownable, thrilling story of exploitation, privilege, and retribution.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This psychological thriller digs deep into power, privilege, and abuse at an exclusive private girls’ school in Ireland. New student Louise “Lou” Manson is not like most of her classmates at Dublin’s Highfield Manor. Her family isn’t wealthy, and she harbors an agenda that could bring the elite institution to its knees. She suspects someone at the tony school drove her best friend to commit suicide and is determined to prove it—until her undercover investigation spirals out of control with devastating consequences. When she is called to testify in an abuse case at Highfield many years later, Lou must confront the past she’s tried so hard to hide. Author Fiona McPhillips excels at balancing Lou’s two timelines: her experience as a student and her life as an adult, in which she has to weigh the cost of staying silent against the cost of speaking up. Peering insightfully into the sometimes complicated friendships between girls and confronting the power dynamics that allow institutional abuse to endure, When We Were Silent is both a clever and darkly thrilling read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Dublin Catholic school's culture of silence proves deadly in Irish journalist McPhillips's searing debut novel. In 1986, 17-year-old Louise Manson enrolls at the prestigious Highfield Manor to avenge her best friend Tina, who got pregnant and killed herself after being repeatedly raped by Maurice McQueen, the school's gym teacher and swim coach. McQueen promptly molests Lou, but when she reports him to school authorities, nobody believes her. Desperate and furious, Lou hatches a plan to publicly expose McQueen that ends in someone's death. Thirty-plus years later, Lou—now a married professor with a teenage daughter—has worked hard to move past "the Highfield Affair." When an attorney asks her to testify on behalf of a 14-year-old suing Highfield for the "systemic cover-up of abuse in the school and the swimming club over decades," she reluctantly agrees. Then someone tries to extort her into staying silent, prompting Lou to again take matters into her own hands, with shattering results. McPhillips deftly alternates between past and present, maximizing suspense by playing multiple mysteries in each timeline off one another. With the added urgency of Lou's first-person-present narration, the author wrings her powerful plot for maximum impact. This is a triumph.
Customer Reviews
SLOW
Despite the subject matter this book bored me to tears.
Terrible
Save your time and money. Skip this book.