Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.
My book this week is one that I’ve had on my kindle for over a year having first come across it on Confessions of a Mystery Novelist… if you haven’t come across this blog and you love crime fiction you really should take a visit. Margot Kinberg has a wealth of knowledge and is always willing to answer questions if your recall isn’t up to her high standards!
Blurb
I have a baby, two shillings, no reputation and nowhere to go, but even so I cannot imagine what far worse might be.
Out of the Silence is a stunning debut novel about three women from very different worlds: Maggie Heffernan, a spirited working-class country girl; Elizabeth Hamilton, whose own disappointment in love has served only to strengthen her humanity; and the remarkable Vida Goldstein, the suffragist who was to become the first woman to stand for Parliament.
When Maggie’s life descends into darkness after a terrible betrayal, the three women’s lives collide. Around this tragedy Wendy James has constructed a masterfully drawn and gripping fiction. Based on a true story, it unfolds at the dawn of the twentieth century against the compelling backdrop of the women’s suffrage movement and a world on the brink of enormous change.
The novel powerfully evokes the plight of women in the early 1900s – not least their limited options, whatever their class and education. However, at its heart this is a story of love – of love gone wrong; of its compromises and disappointments; but ultimately of its extraordinary transformative power. Amazon
First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro
Hawthorn, Melbourne
17 January 1900
I’m looking down at this baby’s head, thinking that it’s too big, that it’s not right an infant’s head should be so big, and watching it work away at my breast, when the missus comes in, hems trailing along the floor and never a bother to her that the skirt will need washing earlier than it ought. She stands right in front of me, her hands clasped, eyebrows raised. ‘Maggie,’ she says in that soft way I have got to know so quickly – the very same way she asked me whether I have ever had any diseases of the organisation, whether I drink spirits or take laudanum – oh-so-polite, but no disguising the nastiness beneath. Maggie,’ she says there’s a gentleman here to see you. She looks down at the baby. ‘Has he finished? You can give him to me if he’s had enough.’
Do you want to know more? Would you keep reading?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below and I recommend reading the Spotlight Post on this book from Confessions of a Mystery Novelist
