The Silent Treatment: A Novel

Written by Abbie Greaves

Narrated by Adrian Rawlins, Olivia Darnley and Alison Downing

“A remarkably assured debut which doesn’t go where you expect it to go. I very much look forward to seeing what she writes next.” — Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“The premise alone had me, but The Silent Treatment itself is just heartrendingly lovely. It’s beautiful, so moving and clever. I truly adored it.”   — Josie Silver, #1 New York Times bestselling author of One Day in December

Resonant with the emotional power of the bestselling novels of David Nicholls and Jojo Moyes, a rich and poignant debut about lies, loss, and a transcendent love at the heart of a troubled marriage.

A lifetime together. 
Six months of silence. 
One last chance.

By all appearances, Frank and Maggie share a happy, loving marriage. But for the past six months, they have not spoken. Not a sentence, not a single word. Maggie isn’t sure what, exactly, provoked Frank’s silence, though she has a few ideas.

Day after day, they have eaten meals together and slept in the same bed in an increasingly uncomfortable silence that has become, for Maggie, deafening.

Then Frank finds Maggie collapsed in the kitchen, unconscious, an empty package of sleeping pills on the table. Rushed to the hospital, she is placed in a medically induced coma while the doctors assess the damage.

If she regains consciousness, Maggie may never be the same. Though he is overwhelmed at the thought of losing his wife, will Frank be able to find his voice once again—and explain his withdrawal—or is it too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062985088

Abbie Greaves

Abbie Greaves is the author of The Silent Treatment. She studied English Literature at the University of Cambridge. She worked in publishing for three years before leaving to focus on writing. She lives in the UK. abbiegreaves.com Twitter: @abbiegreaves1 Instagram: @abbiegreavesauthor

Reviews for The Silent Treatment

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The attempted suicide of Maggie is the catalyst for this story. In a medically induced coma to try and save her life, Maggie's husband, Frank, is encouraged to talk to her and give her something to live for. Frank tells the story of their life together, including the pain of infertility and the joy of a late-in-life baby. At the end of the novel we get Maggie's perspective as well and we begin to see the depth of grief both have endured separately. The big question is can they bear it together and will it make a difference. I liked the slow reveal of the essential conflict because it gave me the chance to develop real empathy for both characters.

[pruegallagher · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was short. It was poignant but didn't quite do it for me.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some people like to talk. Others are naturally more reticent. Some people share everything. Others hold things much closer to their vest. We may think it's easy to determine the truth of things when people talk a lot, when they share what appears to be their every thought. They chatter away, the life of the party, the friendly, the engaging, the approachable and relatable. But for these garrulous folks, what's the content of their silences? We all have secrets, private things we don't share. It's just more obvious in the quiet people. And if a quiet person isn't sharing a lot normally, will those who know and love them even notice if they stop speaking altogether? And what will it take to bring their words back?When the fire alarm goes off, Frank goes into the kitchen to find his dinner burnt and his wife of forty some years unconscious next to an empty pack of sleeping pills. Rushed to the hospital, Maggie is put into a medically induced coma and Frank is completely distraught. Urged by a kind nurse to talk to Maggie, to help pull her back to him, Frank is at a loss. He's never been much of a talker but he has said not one word at all to Maggie in the past six months. But he knows he must tell her what drove him to this guilty, immovable silence even if he fears his revelation will mean losing her one way or another. And so he tells her the story of their life together, meeting her, marrying her, the day to day of their marriage, the late, unexpected birth of their daughter, and his deep and abiding love for her through everything. As he talks, he recounts his own feelings of inadequacy as a partner and as a father. He regrets the unspoken and the misspoken, both in the past six months and in their long years together prior to that. He examines all the places he feels he went wrong and all the ways that Maggie did better than he did.Frank's telling, labelled "Her Silence" is told in the first person. It is rusty and halting and full of recriminations against himself but also the undiminished wonder at his luck in being the person Maggie chose to love. When the story flips to Maggie's perspective, called "His Silence," it is through Frank's reading of her daily planner, in which she's journalled the final seven days of Frank's silence, her countdown to exactly six months of wordlessness, and the narration moves to third person. Despite the shift, both narratives are incredibly personal and open. Frank's view of their marriage, shown in his narration, is not exactly the same as Maggie's, and each of them has kept secrets from the other over the long course of their life together. And just like in a marriage, the two parts together form a whole for the reader. It is the picture of a loving marriage but one stressed by long unfulfilled hopes and dreams, the bewildering sorrow of raising a child who you desperately want to save, and the secrets kept out of fear or guilt or even kindness and protection. It is complicated and knotted and only by finding a voice, can anything heal the two of them, if Maggie wakes up.The differing perspectives tell the reader how each of them viewed the other and those views don't always line up with how they saw themselves, showing the reader the depth of their love for each other and for daughter, Eleanor. Frank and Maggie might have faced many of the same things in their marriage but even when confronted with the same things, infertility, parenting, addiction, they come at the issues in different ways, ways they have never felt important to articulate to the other despite their deep, deep love. There are feelings of overpowering sorrow, grief, and a panic that it might be too late that pervades the whole of the book. Greaves draws out the reason for Frank's silence and the full circumstances that led to Maggie's attempted suicide, keeping it from the reader, building a sort of desperate anticipation and a heartbreaking undertone as the book moves forward. This is not a book about a marriage gone wrong so much as gone quiet, retreated. It is a book about a family crumbling and helpless. It bears witness to the deep importance and the devastating failures of communication, intimate and moving, emotional and poignant.

[nicx27 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Silent Treatment is a book with a premise that totally intrigued me. Why on earth hasn't Frank spoken to Maggie for 6 months after being happily married for 44 years?!The book begins at the end of the 6 months when Frank hasn't spoken for so long that he's almost forgotten how, and Maggie is at the end of her tether. It takes a seismic event for them both to break the silence and that is where we are at the start of the story. From there we hear from Frank, looking back at their marriage, and from Maggie through her journal. What we get is an intimate look at their life together.This is a very accomplished debut novel, full of heart and soul. It's hard to talk about it without giving away too much and I really think that the strength of this story is how it unfolds, the reveals that occur as we live through the heartache of the present and the ups and downs of the past, so I don't want to spoil it for other readers.Abbie Greaves peels back the layers of a lifetime spent with another person so well. I felt like I knew Frank and Maggie, particularly Frank actually, as it's his story that is most prominent. Utterly devoted to Maggie, I knew it must have been something life-changing that stopped him talking to her. Whilst I started to have an inkling of what it might relate to, it was still both moving and heartbreaking when the moment came for him to confess.The Silent Treatment is a gorgeous read, so insightful. For a book that revolves around a very small number of characters, it's so full of depth and so emotionally charged. I didn't find it difficult to keep wondering what I would do in Frank or Maggie's place.

[bookchickdi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Abbie Greaves's debut novel The Silent Treatment, Frank and Maggie, who have been married for over forty years, have not spoken in six months. Or rather, Frank has not spoken to Maggie for six months. When Maggie decides that she cannot take another moment of it, she overdoses on pills and ends up in a medically induced coma.Frank is beside himself, and at the hospital a kindly nurse caring for Maggie tells him that the best thing he can do is to talk to Maggie. So Frank begins to recount their love story.While out at bar celebrating with colleagues, Frank sees Maggie enter in a crowd of people. She enters "like a cyclone descending, all flailing limbs and air kisses, a flurry of hugs and exclamations and the sort of warmth everyone in the vicinity could feel." He was entranced.Maggie was the complete opposite of Frank. He was shy and socially awkward. His colleagues convinced him to talk to Maggie, and while he screwed up his courage and did talk to her, he didn't ask her out.By luck, he ended up at the doctor's office where Maggie worked as a nurse, and this time he didn't let the opportunity pass. He asked her out and she said yes. And so began the love story of Maggie and Frank.They didn't have much money, but that didn't matter. They enjoyed each other's company and brought out the best in each other. One thing Frank struggled with was that he felt in times of distress, he didn't say the right thing, so to avoid saying the wrong thing, he just didn't say anything at all.Maggie and Frank had their share of disappointments, like all couples. She had a miscarriage, and then struggled for years with infertility. When they finally had a daughter, Eleanor, they were over the moon. Ellie became the light of their lives.The Silent Treatment is not only a story about a marriage, it is also a story about a family. Ellie changes their lives, and when she has problems they cannot fix, they each turn inward away from each other instead towards each other. We see Frank's point of view as he tells their love story, and we get Maggie's point of view in a diary she kept during the week before she attempted suicide.Book clubs would have much to talk about with The Silent Treatment. You can dig deep into why Frank stopped talking, why Maggie didn't confront him sooner, and how important it is to communicate honestly with your significant other. It is a heartbreaking book, and the subject matter may be difficult for anyone who has dealt with addiction or mental illness in their own family.Fans of Jojo Moyes Me Before You will want to read The Silent Treatment, and Moyes even has a quote on the cover of the book. If you like your fiction to go emotionally deep, this one is for you. I'll be looking forward to Abbie Greaves' next book.

[jfe16 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Review of Advance Reader’s EditionMaggie and Frank, married for some forty years, have, by choice, not spoken to each other for the past six months. Not one word.Today, Maggie lies in the hospital, unconscious, quite possibly never to recover from her suicide attempt. And now, finally, Frank will talk to Maggie. But will his words be enough . . . or are they too little and far too late?Well-defined characters populate this eloquent tale of a marriage floundering over the secrets both are keeping. Their backstory, told through Frank’s one-sided conversations and Maggie’s journal, is filled with struggle, despair, love, and hope. These exquisitely-detailed glimpses into the past slowly reveal the truth of their lives together, gently weaving themselves into an ethereal tapestry that will certainly touch the heart of every reader.But the story flounders and goes awry when it asks the reader to accept the premise that these two characters would be so cruel as to torment each other by keeping silent for six months. They live together, eat together, sleep together, make love with each other, and say nothing?No matter how difficult Frank finds it to express himself, they’ve shared their lives for more than forty years and the secrets they each hold don’t begin to rate six months of silence. Nor does their backstory reveal any possibility that either of them would willingly cause the other such anguish by making a choice to maintain absolute silence. Yes, readers should suspend disbelief, but the cruelty of these characters not speaking a single word to each other over such a long time is simply too inconceivable for readers to accept. Three stars for the exquisite writing.I received a free copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads program