{"id":8207,"date":"2019-10-28T11:28:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T11:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=8207"},"modified":"2019-11-25T12:32:06","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T12:32:06","slug":"the-silence-diaries-by-jennifer-kavanagh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=8207","title":{"rendered":"The Silence Diaries by Jennifer Kavanagh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Roundfire Books October 25 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

176pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Zo\u00eb Fairbairns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Suzie is a political ventriloquist. She appears on TV with a hand-operated dummy named Bruce which has the face of a fox. Suzie and Bruce conduct three-cornered interviews with politicians. The idea is to use this wacky format to trap the politicians into indiscretion.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d watch them, if they were real. But, disappointingly, the fictional interviews are not so much shown in The Silence Diaries<\/em> as reviewed by narrator Orbs, who is in love with Suzie and so perhaps somewhat biased. Orbs describes an interview with \u00a0London mayor Sadiq Khan as \u2018magnificent\u2019, and another, with ex-prime minister David Cameron, as\u00a0 \u2018a triumph\u2019 \u00a0But we don\u2019t get to see on the page the actual words the fictionalized Cameron is supposed to have uttered when confronted with the fox\u2019s challenge, \u2018You really landed Theresa in it, didn\u2019t you? Running away like that.\u2019 Instead we are offered Orbs\u2019 drooling comparisons with other, inferior, challenges: \u2018None of the clever parliamentarians, not even a Paxman or a Humphries, could make such a mockery of a former prime minister…The overall impression was of acute frustration and, yes, powerlessness.\u2019<\/p>\n

Orbs\u2019 accounts of his own job are similarly short on actual information. He is, he tells us, \u2018something in the City\u2019, which is an odd phrase for someone to use about themselves. It\u2019s more commonly uttered in the third person, either in tones of awe or, alternatively, scorn and bafflement, suggesting the speaker doesn\u2019t know, and doesn\u2019t care to know, what workers in financial institutions actually do all day. Is Orbs into stocks and shares?\u00a0 Futures and options? Derivatives? \u00a0Pension fund management? I hope he is nowhere near mine.<\/p>\n

When not going to unspecified site meetings or having his annual review (of what?), Orbs wanders round a labyrinth, goes swimming, or moonlights as a street-theatre fool. Unlike his day job, these activities earn detailed and apparently-knowledgeable descriptions. It would be good to see, on the page, some of the ways in which his fool-ish lines and performances interact with his work-related conversations with his something-in-the-City pals. But no: when they go to the pub together \u2018by mutual consent there was no shop talk\u2019.<\/p>\n

It would be equally revealing to have a taste of the \u2018respected\u2019 financial journalism which is Suzie\u2019s day job, but it never appears on the page either. Instead we are told that she \u2018takes the temperature of the nation in an unattributable way. And when people read her column in the paper or online, they know it\u2019s real.\u2019 If you say so, Orbs.<\/p>\n

The love-story-element of The Silence Diaries<\/em> resolves itself in the joys of parenthood, domesticity and professional advancement. The more abstract endorsements in the jacket blurb \u2013 \u2018a sweet and gentle novel about how hard it can be to communicate honestly with others and be our real selves\u2019 \u2013 are too vague to offer much insight into the point of it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Zo\u00eb Fairbairns<\/p>\n

Orbs … is, he tells us, \u2018something in the City\u2019, which is an odd phrase for someone to use about themselves. It\u2019s more commonly uttered in the third person, either in tones of awe or, alternatively, scorn and bafflement, suggesting the speaker doesn\u2019t know, and doesn\u2019t care to know, what workers in financial institutions actually do all day. Is Orbs into stocks and shares? Futures and options? Derivatives? Pension fund management? I hope he is nowhere near mine […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8209,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207\/revisions\/8209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}