In 1997, a phone call from Isla Green’s father pulls her back home to Australia for the first time in a decade.

Thirty years ago, the Greens’ neighbour Mandy disappeared amid talk of a broken marriage, but now her family is trying to reconnect, and the last person to see Mandy alive was Isla’s father. For Isla, returning to Sydney brings with it fraught childhood memories and the confrontation of her own demons.

Split between Isla’s arrival back in Sydney in 1997, and that fraught summer in 1967 before Mandy disappeared, The Silence is told from multiple points of view. As Isla unravels the past that links these two families, the reader is drawn into a story of the many buried secrets hidden within the idyllic image of the perfect Australian suburban life. At the centre of all this is the catalyst for the story: the Stolen Generation and the taking of Indigenous children from their families.

This is a slow-paced novel and, while there is focus on character development, at times it lacks the depth to really make an impact, and seems to centre more on white guilt than the atrocities committed. However, the meticulous research Allott has done is evident between the pages and, by the ending, coupled with a brilliant authors’ note on The Stolen Generation, you are reminded why this piece of history should never be silenced.

Reviewed by Hannah Membrey