Mo stór (my darling) is never translated in the novel, but it is used as an obvious term of endearment in context. But the tender moments in this book that showed Keelin and Alex talking Irish to one another was just lovely, and added an extra element to the book for me that I loved a lot. Just like Louise, I listened to West Cork podcast last year and was very impressed at how i nvestigative journalist, Sam Bungey, and documentarian, Jennifer Forde conveyed the impact that Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s murder had on the small community. For Nancy Venable Raine, second only to the soul-breaking burden of her rape at 39 was the silence that shrouded it, a silence born of her own feelings of shame and the incomprehension of others. But that’s simply reflective of the contradictions and injustices women and victims of abuse do encounter on a regular basis, and however complex or difficult it becomes to contend with, it’s impossible to read the novel and claim it’s depictions are anything but genuine.

On the day of Henry and Keelin Kinsella’s wild party at their big house a violent storm engulfed the island of Inisrun, cutting it off from the mainland. The book goes back and forth from the months just prior to the murder, the filmmakers interviewing islanders and those connected with the case, and the present day as Keelin sees it. After the Silence alternates chapters between Keelin’s perspective and transcripts of the interviews by the filmmakers. Please do not use it in any marketing material, online or in print, without asking permission from me first.In fact, it doesn’t come as a surprise at all if you’ve been paying attention, but that doesn’t stop After the Silence from drawing you in. After The Silence is an account of the surprises and challenges facing Earth when contact with an alien civilization of staggering advancement and age finally takes place on New Year’s Day, 2052. As the story progresses, we must wonder whether or not Henry is guilty—and if so, is Keelin covering for him, an unreliable narrator?

He goes through a period of victim shaming and gaslighting which felt really uncharacteristic, and it seems this was completely looked over as he and Keelin are friends again in the next scene as if nothing happened. Ten years ago Nessa Crowley one of the ‘Crowley Girls’ died at Keelins birthday party which tears the small island community apart with the blame firmly fixed on Henry. 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. I think it's her best yet and really shows the maturity and the strength of Louise O'Neill's writing. This book is set on a small island off West Cork, and features a decade old murder, a true life documentary about the case and tightly clung secrets.

It's slower and steadier and builds up the relationships and the complexities of each character in the novel before revealing everything to the reader. There were some repetitive moments but I appreciated that most of the time as a display of how repetitive and cyclical Keelin's relationships were. In this bold, brilliant, disturbing new novel Louise O’Neill shows that deadly secrets are devastating to those who hold them close.