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RBL doesn't prescribe what these should bebut services should be inclusive of all members of the community. Hanna, M., J. Hartford Vargas, and R. Saldívar (eds.). 2017. Junot Díaz and the Decolonial Imaginary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. as their families and supporters. The core of our organization is a support group, message board, and chat room Deaf characters and actors have long been underrepresented, stereotyped, and ignored in the history of cinema and television. A majority of the few deaf characters featured or included in movies and shows were often played by hearing actors (usually with no ties to the Deaf community), and painted as highly-dependent beings. A deaf character was also often dismissed by the majority of (hearing) characters, and regarded as slow-minded and gullible. Okay look. I think Louise O'Neill is excellent. Asking For It is one of my favourite books. But honestly, I'm not sure where she was going with this.
Trigger Warnings: domestic violence, physical abuse, cheating, body dysmorphia, sexual abuse, recreational drug use, alcoholism, graphic sex scenes, murder, gaslighting, post-partum depression. Domestic violence has been extensively explored in fiction in recent years, but the domestic coercion that O'Neill is uncovering here (and the afterword is a tribute to the research behind the novel) is so much more insidious, leaving mental rather than physical scars and thus rendering the victims even more isolated, even questioning their own mental well-being.
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I'm sorry to disagree with the masses here, but I found this movie to be terribly cloying. The acting was earnest, and Kellie Martin and JoBeth Williams do what they can with the script. But, please, spare us yet ANOTHER movie where a poor, victimized disabled person comes to terms with life via the help of a benevolent social worker who cares...REALLY CARES (and WHY is there the obligatory element of the social worker risking her job because she just CARES too damn much?). As in her second novel Asking for It, O’ Neill is great at evoking the small-town vibe. Inisrun is a place where everyone’s business is everyone’s business, and the rumour mill is ever-churning. It’s initially hard to comprehend why Henry and Keelin would choose to remain there after all that’s happened, but we soon discover there’s a reason. It’s not a spoiler to say that Henry Kinsella is an awful guy. The more time we spend with him, the more we realise he’s not all that different from Keelin’s ex-husband, his appalling treatment of her is just more subtle. The way this controlling behaviour - the gaslighting and emotional manipulation - gradually escalates feels very true to life, and is all the more insidious for it. The extent of O’Neill’s research into abuse and abusers is evident here in the way she’s written their interactions, and they can be difficult to read. Scarry, E. 1987. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. I loved the premise of this book, wherein a documentary crew decides to investigate and re-visit all evidence relating to a long unsolved murder. This book was gripping and good. The narration shifts between the events leading up to the party, and the present day where the crew consisting of Noah and Jake interview the Kinsellas and other people involved. While the narration itself was good, I hope there was more clarity in the timeline of events.
As a first foray into a new genre, After the Silence is a change in direction for the Cork writer, but one that still plays to her strengths. Our protagonist Keelin Kinsella has a troubled past, having fled an abusive husband with her young son Alan in tow. She remarried to the wealthy and charismatic Henry, son of a prominent hotelier. They have a daughter together and live comfortably well-off on the fictional, windswept island of Inisrun, off the Irish coast. However, Keelin is haunted by more than one event from the past. On a stormy night ten years prior, a much-loved local girl Nessa Crowley, one of the beautiful, smart and popular 'Crowley Girls’, was killed at a party in their house. The murder is unsolved, and the islanders presume either Henry or Keelin responsible, although nothing has ever been proven. After two brilliant forays into young adult novels, both well worth a read, O’Neill brought her unstinting criticism of patriarchy to her first adult novel Almost Love in the best and most scathing way possible. After the Silence is a more-than-worthy second adult novel. While both have passing similarities—depictions of emotional abuse, gaslighting, male partners treating women poorly—O’Neill looks at these issues from an entirely different angle. She forces us to confront not the darkest parts of relationships (particularly with men); rather she forces us to confront the greyest parts, the parts we seldom talk about because to admit they are present would be to admit our entire model of romance is broken. As was the case with her Asking For It, O'Neill uses her fiction as a vehicle for increasing our understanding of a phenomenon that deserves more understanding (not to mention more public funding). Once again, the book is spot on in relation to the (not so) subtle ways misogyny plays out in our media and cultural modes of thinking from gendered ageing and appearance ('there were no comments about Henry's appearance, she noticed. He was allowed to have aged within the last ten years, but for her to have done so was a crime against humanity') to blaming the wife when a husband has an affair. As a character in the book says so aptly, 'Don't you think it's interesting that we always ask "Why do these women stay?" We never think to ask, "Why are these men violent?" or "Why won't these men stop terrorising their partners?" 'Neary, L. 2018. “It Just Felt Very Wrong”: Sherman Alexie’s Accusers Go on the Record. NPR, 5 March. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/05/589909379/it-just-felt-very-wrong-sherman-alexies-accusers-go-on-the-record.
Over the past two decades, the bestselling author has been a carer three times: to her father suffering from Parkinson’s, to her widowed mother and presently to her mother-in-law, the exuberant Granny Rosie. Unafraid to depict the exhausting reality of caring, her timely story is compassionate and humane, judiciously blending the personal with the political; as she eloquently argues, “care is a feminist issue”. The Maidens After the Silenceis a dark and intricate story of the lies we can live, and the fatal effects of long-held secrets. Keelin Kinsellsa and her husband Henry live an enviable life in “the big house” on the island of Inisrún. The owners of a chic international artists’ retreat that attracts celebrities and artists to the island, they lead a seemingly perfect life of privilege and parties. The night they host a party for Keelin’s birthday, a huge storm hits Inisrún and ensures that no one can enter or leave the island. As the sun comes up the next day, teenager Nessa Crowley is found dead outside the house and all eyes are on the Kinsellas. 10 years later, two documentary filmmakers arrive to investigate the unsolved murder of the most alluring of the infamous Crowlely sisters, and the Kinsella family’s connection to her death. This book starts out as what could be a standard whodunit, but turns into a psychological and dark read. The characters and characterisation are brilliant - every character has their own place, and every one is fleshed out. It's a disturbing and uncomfortable read at times, but a fascinating one all the same. You feel this book rather than enjoy it -which is true of every Louise O'Neill book I have read (the first two...and the other two are glaring at my from my bookshelf as I type!) I really like the premise of the novel and the setting on the small Irish island is fantastic as it creates a great atmosphere. The night of Nessa’s murder is depicted well, it’s almost Bacchanalian with a wild storm adding to the mood of the evening. The resentment of the islanders towards the wealthy Kinsella family comes across loud and clear with plenty of tension, suspicion and mistrust. The portrayal of the characters is good, Henry is not at all likeable and Keelin is an interesting puzzle. There’s an explosive atmosphere between some of the characters too. The mystery of Nessa’s fate builds well to a stormy crescendo, with a storm of hate coming the Kinsella way and their friendless isolation is clear. I did guess part of the ending but this in no way spoils the outcome. I had expected this to be a murder mystery drama and it is but one of the main themes is domestic control and abuse which I hadn’t expected. However, this is done well and is an important topic and a valid part of the storyline. Beliso de Jesús, A., C. Beltrán, L. Catelli, E. Creed, M. Cuesta, A. Dávila, Z. Dinzey, et al. 2018. Open Letter against Media Treatment of Junot Díaz. Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 May.Keelin and Henry Kinsella are prime suspects, having been vilified by the local residents of the island of Inisrun, where they live. Their children have grown up and lived in the shadow of Nessa's murder, their daughter escaping to boarding school in Scotland at age 11 simply to escape the notoriety and be somewhere where no one knows her family or what happened. Alex has withdrawn and keeps to himself. On one level, this is a psychological thriller. A documentary crew arrives on the small island of Inisrún. They are investigating the unsolved murder of Nessa Crowley, who ten years ago was found dead during a party on the storm-embattled island. The islanders blame Henry Kinsella and, by association, his wife Keelin, who is our protagonist. As the story progresses, we must wonder whether or not Henry is guilty—and if so, is Keelin covering for him, an unreliable narrator?—or if the mystery goes deeper. In actuality, Henry is guilty of many other things—whether or not he is the murderer is not something I will spoil. I really hate it when a premise to a book promises something so much more than the book itself actually offers. Such was the case with AFTER THE SILENCE by Louise O'Neill. What was meant to be about the ten year anniversary of the murder of Nessa Crowley ended up something far more discombobulated to the point of boring and uninteresting. But one of my biggest gripes in AFTER THE SILENCE is the prolific use of the Irish tongue. While I understand that the story is set in a part of Ireland where Irish is the primary spoken language, many readers are not proficient in such a language so for them it is completely foreign. Either there was the constant use of the native tongue or Keelin drifting off into fairyland, as she so often did.
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