Countless people who never met her claim to understand who Rachel was. She was a demon. A heroine. The most important person to have lived. A saint. A devil. On Emilia Morris’s thirteenth birthday, her mother Rachel moves into a tent at the bottom of their garden. From that day on, she never says another word. Thirteen and hitting puberty is a time when girls really need their mums and the pyjama scene and the baked beans of lies scene had me raging at the cruelty of Rachel. As a mum of two girls and being a daughter who is close to my mum I couldn’t imagine anything being a good enough reason for what she was doing. Rachel’s messianic shadow looms heavy on all that happens after her, over the global actions of the Community as well as the lives of her husband and daughter. She is at once a malicious eminence grise and a scapegoat open to the projections of all. For years, I did my best to ignore the existence of the notebooks. They were in a box which was first stored in an attic, then beneath the stairs, then under a bed. I didn’t want to read them, and I didn’t want anyone else to read them either. Sometimes, I would even hope that I might be burgled and the box stolen. Wasn’t there already enough obsession with my mother without publishing her notebooks? But I’ve come to realise that the demand will not go away. The Community has made sure of that.

A big novel, a story for our age that asks the central question: how to save an endangered world when there can no longer be heroes? Love and power burn through The Silence Project. A terrifying and beautiful coming of age story. What an achievement!' Isabelle Dupuy, author of Living the Dream I really enjoyed the descriptions of Emilia's contrasting experiences in the DRC as well. From still wrangling with her relationship with her mother and the Community, to violence and protests, exploring beautiful nature and falling in love. The description of the gorillas made me want to visit the DRC.I think the story behind this book is incredibly powerful. While I've read a lot of books about cults, this one was quite unique in its approach and extremely convincing. Where it fell down, I felt, was in the decision to write the book as Emilia's biography of her mother. This format made the book dry at times, and dragged out parts of the story, especially in the middle. The author’s decision to blend fact with fiction and write this in the style of a memoir, with the aid of letters and notebooks, was a bold move and as a fiction lover this was the one thing I did struggle with at the start. However Emilia’s voice and her feelings towards her mum soon dispelled that. We have an exclusive extract available for you to read and you can even win a set of 10 copies of The Silence Project for your reading group, just visit our Noticeboard. The Silence Project

Overall, this is a book that makes you really want to embrace silence and simply hear yourself, and eventually others, even for a moment. I adored and laughed out loud at the 'Life lessons list' including but not limited to the list entries of, Always wear pants with a cotton gusset. Lifes too short for dry clean blouses. Keep your body fit and your mind will follow. I was also pleasantly surprised by the mention of Pontefract in the book which is just a couple of miles from where I currently live! I love the way the book (so far) has been set out; with the footnotes, the publishers notes, references to specific diaries entries from her mother's notebooks, and the foreword by our main character which made it all seem believable and an actual historical event she's recounting. Truly disturbing in many ways, from the decisions made by Emilia's mother Rachel and the emotional and physical impact that has on Emilia and her Dad to the worldwide fanatical craze that the community has become and the inability of Emilia and her father to escape its clutches and the legacy of Rachel.I really loved how it was Rachel's daughter that narrated the story and how brutally honest she was about her part within the community when she worked there. I felt I could really connect with her and empathised with her when she told us how ashamed she was. I cant even imagine how hard that work be living under her mother's shadow, her legacy and seeing what the community did but saying it was all because of Rachel. Though she never speaks, Rachel’s silence is ‘heard’ by likeminded women around the world, some of whom decide to join her, and from a single tent, arises a community who worship Rachel and what she stands for.