"The Silence"

Daisy Pearce was born in Cornwall and grew up on a smallholding surrounded by hippies. She read Stephen King’s Cujo and The Hamlyn Book of Horror far too young and has been fascinated with the macabre ever since.

Pearce applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Silence, and reported the following:

Page 69 is the end of a chapter in which the protagonist Stella finds herself at home after a stay in hospital. She is on the phone to her aunt and it is mostly dialogue, an ebb and flow of conversation that introduces Stella to a doctor who her aunt thinks can help her. It is the first sense Stella has that she is losing her grip on reality, a matter not helped by the vodka she is slugging from the bottle found in the freezer. The final line: ‘Is this how it happens? Slowly, destroying everything, like the descent of lava’ reveals her helplessness in the face of what she believes to be her mind unravelling.

This is a pivotal moment in the text, representing one of the main themes of the story - fear of insanity - and revealing Stella's propensity to addiction. It also gives an insight into her current state of mind and her relationship to one of the only people willing to help her.

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--Marshal Zeringue