Tag: phychological thriller

Book review: The Silent Listener by Lyn Yeowart

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The Silent Listener by Lyn Yeowart is a disturbing psychological thriller (trigger warning) set across three timelines – the 1940s, 60s and 1983.

His room smells like the orange blankets have licked up the dying odours from his body and are slowly releasing them into the air, and the semi-darkness reminds me of the day I hid in here and saw a snake on the bed, about to attack me.

In 1983, Joy Henderson returns to her family’s remote dairy farm in rural Victoria to nurse her dying father, George. From the outside George was an upstanding community member and church elder. To his children he was a mercurial sadistic abuser who used the word of god to punish them. 

If the hovering Christ saw one of them break a rule, he floated down to whisper in their father’s ear, and then it would start. The thump on the table, … the screams of eternal hell and damnation, his hot red face not ten inches away from the sinner’s.

The 1940s timeline tells the story of how George met Joy’s mother Gwen and swept her off her feet. They married quickly and he whisked her off to his isolated rural dairy farm and enforced all his ‘rules’. The couple had three children – Mark, Joy and Ruth who died in an unfortunate accident. 

Joy knew she should feel sorry for Ruth, but the truth was she felt a familiar white tremor of jealousy

Joy is 11 years old in the 1960s when her friend and neighbour Wendy disappears. The police investigation fails to solve the mystery and Wendy is never seen again. Joy’s father prays with Wendy’s parents.

Pain is a gift because it makes you angry. Angry at the ones who hurt you. Angry at the world. And angry people fight.

Upon her return to the farm, Joy grapples with her childhood trauma and vengeful feelings toward her father. She talks to her sister Ruth who is also there and goads her on to entertain revenge. She manages to get George to confess to Wendy’s disappearance, then finds him dead the following morning.

the moment he dies, the room explodes with life

When George dies, the circumstances are suspicious – he has a belt tied around his neck – and Senior Constable Shepard investigates. He was also involved in the search for Wendy years before. 

We’re all liars… It’s not a question of whether we lie or not, it’s a question of what lies we choose to tell. And to whom.

The Silent Listener is about domestic violence, religious hypocrisy, trauma and survival, the unreliability of memory, mental illness, and the duel personas of abusers. Yeowart casts the characters in vivid colour through this confronting, carefully plotted and twisty tale. 

Book review: The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

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The Paris Apartment is a slow burn psychological thriller by Lucy Foley told from multiple points of view. The novel is set (you guessed it) in Paris while riots are breaking out in the city.

It’s not about where you came from. What kind of shit might have happened to you in the past. It’s about who you are. What you do with the opportunities life presents to you.

Jess leaves London after an altercation with her boss and goes to stay with her brother in his Paris apartment. When she gets there brother Ben is no where to be found. At first she thinks he’s just gone away briefly, but then she finds blood on his cats fur, a bleach stain on the floor near the front door, his necklace that he never took off, and his motorbike with shredded tyres in the basement.

You know, I read somewhere that sixty percent of us can’t go more than ten minutes without lying. Little slippages: to make ourselves sound better, more attractive, to others. White lies to avoid causing offence. So it’s not like I’ve done anything out of the ordinary. It’s only human.

The cast of characters that live in the apartment block include an old friend of her brothers, a Parisienne socialite, a troubled teenager, an angry alcoholic and a concierge who sees all but says little. The building itself also develops a creepy character of its own as the story progresses. Jess soon discovers that the disperate residents and the apartment block itself are not what they first seemed.

It’s a beautiful building, but there’s something rotten at its heart. Now he’s discovered it he can smell the stench of it everywhere.

The Paris Apartment is an easy read with interesting character development and some unexpected twists. Themes include class, wealth, corruption, betrayal, unrequited love and inner demons.