After the Silence by Louise O’Neill. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
An unsolved murder. A close-knit community living on the island of Inisrun, off the coast of county Cork. A film crew arrives to make a documentary to mark the 10th anniversary of Nessa Crowley’s death, hoping to uncover new evidence. On the surface After the Silence sounds like your standard crime novel. But this is Louise O’Neill, so the murder itself acts as the backdrop for an examination of abusive relationships — in all their forms.
The Kinsella family have never quite recovered from the night Nessa Crowley was killed at a party in their home. How could they, when people are convinced that Henry Kinsella is the man responsible for the crime and Keelin, his wife, is covering for him.
But Keelin knows that Henry is not a violent man. She left her first husband because he was physically abusive, Henry is not the same. But there is more to domestic abuse than physical violence. Keelin and Henry’s relationship is unsettling from the beginning and that sense of unease grows as the story unfolds.
Similar to The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard, After the Silence takes the popularity of true crime and turns it back into fiction. There are echoes of the West Cork podcast here and of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara in The Nothing Man.
After the Silence is an atmospheric and disconcerting slow burner of a novel, which in true O’Neill style spotlights difficult subjects without feeling lecture-y.
After the Silence by Louise O’Neill is published by riverrun, an imprint of Quercus Books, and is available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook format.