It was so refreshing to read the restrained prose of this debut novel after the florid style of the last novel I read!

It was also refreshing to read a novel that challenges the 'minor crime' mythology of convicts in the colonial era and explores the longevity of 'see what you made me do' in excusing domestic violence.

Shortlisted for the 2020 Hungerford Award, The Silence of Water derives from the life of Edwin Thomas Salt, a real-life convict whose death sentence for the murder of his wife MaryAnn was commuted to transportation because of his defence of provocation. Provocation has a long history of being used as a partial defence to reduce a conviction of murder to manslaughter, and indeed decades ago when I was on a jury myself, the jury was directed by the judge to consider it in a case of male-on-male violence. Provocation as a defence was abolished in Victoria in 2005, and The Guardian tells me that Queensland remains one of the few Australian jurisdictions to retain it. (The ACT and Northern Territory have restricted its use but not abolished it entirely.) In Booth's novel, the commuted sentence offers Salt an opportunity for a fresh start in the Antipodes...

The novel, which has a somewhat disjointed and confusing structure, begins in 1906 with Salt's teenage descendant Fan (Frances) Johnson who knows nothing about him, much less his criminal history. Living in Adelaide with her parents and younger siblings, she is profoundly upset by the news that her mother Agnes, has agreed to return the family to Fremantle to take care of her father Edwin. His third wife Annie has had enough of his drinking and thrown him out, but at eighty, he's now too frail to support himself. Agnes against her better judgement, gives in to the emotional blackmail about duty to 'family'.

Moving backwards and forwards in time and place, Edwin's backstory in a respectable tailoring family in mid 19th century Britain is gradually revealed to the reader, and partially also to Fan who succumbs to curiosity about the secrets of her family. Her mother had always maintained that the South Australian side of the family was all they had and all they needed, but Fan is a feisty girl and defiantly bonds with her 'new' grandfather. Through her conversations with him she amasses tantalising information from snippets he lets fall. Edwin is careful to hide his dark past with half-truths, but is no match for her snooping amongst his things.

Meticulously researched, the novel depicts the fragility of life in this era, especially for women.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/04/26/the-silence-of-water-by-sharron-booth/ ( )