Page 18 - Phonebox Magazine October 2016

Book Review
The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain
IHeather Carroll
f you are a fan of Jodi Picoult and haven’t yet tried Diane Chamberlain, then you are in for a treat!
Prolific author and New York Times
bestseller, Chamberlain has written a vast array of ction including a short series of books, sequels and many stand-alone novels. She deals with issues around family drama, suspense and intrigue, usually embedded in a mystery. Her work is so readable, it was tricky to decide which one to review, but her recent book The Silent Sister (2014) is certainly excellent.
After the death of her father, Riley MacPherson returns to her childhood home in North Carolina to clear out the house and sell up. However, while sorting through papers stored in a cupboard, she stumbles upon a box of old newspaper articles which start the unravelling of a huge family secret.
As a child, Riley grew up believing that her
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H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
AThelma Shacklady
lthough to the casual browser this book might seem to belong to the natural world category, it is in fact much more than that.
The author has been fascinated by falconry since childhood, and in particular the training of a goshawk. It is when her father dies and she is devastated by grief that she becomes obsessed with obtaining her own goshawk and training it. That desire becomes inextricably combined with her bereavement. Some months after her father’s death she travels up to Scotland to pay £800 for a young female goshawk and takes it back to Cambridge. She then lls the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of creatures.
It is several days later that the hawk’s name ‘drops into her head’ – Mabel, from amabilis, meaning loveable.’An old, slightly silly name, an unfashionable name’, but nevertheless, Mabel she became. And step by step, day by day hawk and trainer get to know one another
older sister, Lisa had died tragically as a teenager but it would seem that the story was not as straightforward as that. Lisa is, in fact, alive and well, living far away under a new identity... but why has she been on the run all these years and how, as a teenager, did she manage to create a new identity for herself? Riley slowly starts to uncover the story of her sister’s life and what may have happened to her. She meets resistance from a number of people she approaches for help – clearly someone knows something but they’re not letting on. Even Danny, Riley’s reclusive brother, wants nothing to do with her investigations. He is still suffering from the after-effects of military action and is haunted by childhood issues and resentment surrounding Lisa’s life and her death. With determination and persistence, Riley starts to piece together the truth about Lisa’s life and discovers that it is not only Lisa’s childhood
she is learning about – but her own! Riley is determined that Lisa is still alive and sets out to prove this, whatever the cost.
As with many of her books, this gripping mystery was hard to put down. Chamberlain creates a rich atmosphere, believable characters and tells her stories in a sensitive and moving way. I am eagerly anticipating the release of her next novel, ‘Pretending to Dance’.
and to trust each other.
But this is just part of the book, which reads like a personal, rather intimate journal, which may perhaps be how it began. Along with autobiographical details, many of them linked with her beloved father, Helen Macdonald also devotes chapters to other writers who have in uenced her, in particular T.H.White, whose own book ‘The Goshawk’ describes his struggle to train a goshawk with very little experience. In a chapter devoted to him headed ‘Mr White’, Helen Macdonald describes his life as a teacher of English at Stowe School and his unhappiness in that role. Later she writes about ctional schoolteacher, Jim Prideaux, who appears in John Le Carre’s novel ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, commenting on the similarities and differences between the two.
But always she returns to the account of her relationship with Mabel, her successes and failures, her anxieties and errors, as she pursues her dream of having a fully trained goshawk.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, nding it dif cult to put down. It contains such honesty and self deprecation, while at the same time revealing a deep knowledge and passion for the ancient art of falconry. There are parts of it which have a lyrical quality and yet it has an underlying theme of grief and loss. And I love the title!
18 Phonebox Magazine | October 2016