In the cold, wet summer of 1960, eleven-year-old Joy Henderson lives in constant fear of her father. She tries to make him happy but, as he keeps reminding her, she is nothing but a filthy sinner destined for Hell.
Yet, decades later, she returns to the family’s farm to nurse him on his death bed. To her surprise, her ‘perfect’ sister Ruth is also there, whispering dark words, urging revenge.
And then, the day after their father finally confesses to a despicable crime, Joy finds him dead, with a belt pulled tight around his neck . . .
For Senior Constable Alex Shepherd, investigating this murder revives memories of an unsolved case still haunting him since that strange summer of 1960: the disappearance of nine-year-old Wendy Boscombe.
As seemingly impossible facts surface about the Hendersons – from the past and the present – Shepherd suspects that Joy is pulling him into an intricate web of lies and that Wendy’s disappearance is the key to the bizarre truth.
Propelling the reader back and forth between the 1940s, 1960s and 1980s, The Silent Listener is an unforgettable literary suspense novel set in the dark, gothic heart of rural Australia.
‘Intense. Intricate. Emotionally devastating. This is proper Australian gothica.’ LIAM PIEPER
‘A cracking thriller with heart.’ JANE SULLIVAN
‘Totally addictive.’ BOOKS+PUBLISHING
‘Vivid and heart-rending…simply unforgettable.’ THE AGE, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
The Silent Listener
Publishers
Australia/NewZealand: Penguin Random House Australia
UK: Joffe Books
France: Presses de la Cite (2022)
Russia: Eskmo (2022)
Reviews of The Silent Listener
‘a really terrific novel’
It manages to do a home and horror and crime and cleverness with such delicacy. The way that she writes what it means to walk on eggshells through life is so well done. It’s a really terrific novel.
Kate Evans, The Bookshelf, Radio National
Vivid and heart-rending, The Silent Listener is simply unforgettable.
— Sue Turnbull, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald
… an outstanding debut that highlights themes of domestic violence and living under constant threat. Yeowart is a master of creating tension between characters, while showcasing the electrifying small-town life of rural Australia. I can’t wait to see what she delivers next.
…engaging, horrifying, and notably successful in maintaining suspense through nearly 500 pages.
Penelope Cottier, The Canberra Times
A deftly wrought suspense from a remarkable new literary talent. I was hooked from the first page…a book that should be atop everyone’s reading list…Yeowart’s prose is spectacular, and the characters are so richly imagined. This is a novel about inherited violence and redemption packaged as a cracking psychological thriller.
— JP Pomare, author of Call Me Evie and In The Clearing
The Silent Listener is a cracking thriller with heart. It intrigues, it twists and turns, it deftly combines the muddy domestic details of life on a farm with a black, Gothic sensibility of lies and violence and the heartbreaking fantasy world of a young child. At first, I paused often to savour the language and mood, but I had to race through the last 100 pages, consumed with curiosity, hope and horror.
— Jane Sullivan, literary columnist, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald
A heartbreaking, terrifying and stunningly accomplished novel that had me holding my breath. Yeowart instantly pulled me into the life of a rural Victorian family dominated by an angry, insecure despot from its unnerving beginnings to its shocking end. The book is a compassionate and wise exploration of trauma and a paean to the beauty of language, with a terrible secret at its core. The story is devastating but I couldn’t look away.
— Kirsten Alexander, author of Half Moon Lake and Riptides