Customer Reviews

Out of The Silence

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Maggie Heffernan is an ordinary country girl in late 19th century Australia. Then she falls in love with the charming, dashing Jack--a love that will have dire consequences. Finding herself pregnant, her lover vanished, Maggie flees her family and the disgrace and goes off to Melbourne to work. In difficult circumstances, and still unbeknownst to her family, she has her baby. And then one day she finds Jack again--and the stage is set for a ghastly tragedy, and a terrible crime..

Elizabeth Hamilton is a young Englishwoman, disappointed in love, who has come to try and make a new life for heself in the colony. And Vida Goldstein is a spirited suffragette, fighting for votes for women in the teeth of family and social opposition.

The lives of these three women will intersect because of the tragedy, and the crime, at the heart of Maggie's story.

Told in the voices of Maggie and Elizabeth, this is a novel that haunts the reader long after it's been put down. It offers no facile theories or excuses for the crime; but it explores the lives of women in 19th century Australia in a way that's immediate, gripping and fascinating. There are no anachronisms here; these are not 21t century gals dressed up in colonial costume. The writer has engaged fully with the period and produced a beautifully-textured and intense reading experience. Highly recommended.

This book was a real eye-opener and fascinating read about the turn of the century in Victoria, Australia. It follows the journey of three young women; a country girl, an English teacher and an Australian political activist. There are babies born, babies who die (some in mysterious circumstances) and you can't help but feel a deep level of empathy for one of the main characters, Maggie, the country girl who fell in love and gave away her innocence, only to be dumped by the man who promised to marry her.

The combination of narrative and diaries, keeps you interested and intrigued, giving you an insight in to the private lives of all three women.

Highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to better understand the pathway women have taken and why.