In the Quiet

Written by Eliza Henry-Jones

Narrated by Jennifer Vuletic

A moving, sweet and uplifting novel of love, grief and the heartache of letting go, from a wonderful new Australian author.

Cate Carlton has recently died, yet she is able to linger on, watching her three young children and her husband as they come to terms with their life without her on their rural horse property.  As the months pass and her children grow, they cope in different ways, drawn closer and pulled apart by their shared loss.  And all Cate can do is watch on helplessly, seeing their grief, how much they miss her and how - heartbreakingly - they begin to heal. Gradually unfolding to reveal Cate's life, her marriage, and the unhappy secret she shared with one of her children, In the Quiet is compelling, simple, tender, true - heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure.

'In the Quiet is an accomplished first book from an exciting new talent. I fell in love with it slowly, over the course of many chapters. It's a quiet book (appropriately named) and an utterly lovely one.' Readings

'Uplifting and heartwarming ... a beautiful depiction of Australian rural life'  Better Reading

'This hearttugging first novel is a beautifully paced mixture of romance, family saga and mystery' Adelaide Advertiser

 

'A glorious book that will make you cry, guaranteed. But it's also uplifting and tender. A surprise find.' Canberra Times

 

'You will weep, and marvel, and pass this book on, and on, to your friends.' Nikki Gemmell

Shortlisted for the 2015 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, longlisted for the 2016 Indie Book Awards (Debut Fiction), longlisted for the 2016 ABIA Awards (General Fiction), and shortlisted for the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards (UTS - Glenda Adams Award for New Writing)

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Dec 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781460792346

Eliza Henry-Jones

Eliza Henry Jones is a freelance writer and novelist based on a little farm in the Yarra Valley in Victoria. She is the author of the novels In the Quiet (2015) and Ache (2017) and the young adult novels P is for Pearl (2018) and How to Grow a Family Tree (2020). Eliza's novels have been listed for multiple awards and she is currently a PhD candidate in creative writing at Deakin University.

Reviews for In the Quiet

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second book in as many months that I have read narrated by a woman, a mother, a wife, that has passed on to the great beyond. Would probably have passed on this if my good friend, Angela hadn't given this five stars. Which would have been a shame because this was simply a beautiful story.Cate, not yet forty, has died, she doesn't remember how and hopes to find out as she watches her family try to come to terms with her death. She is able to see certain things, she has no control over what, or when. Time skips and jumps and in between we learn her back story and that of her family. Jesse, Rafferty, and Cameron, her children, her sister Bea, her friend Laura and her husband, all grieve in different ways, one has a big secret that is eating at him, and one feels responsible for her death.Although there are moments of sadness this is a life affirming book, how they learn to go on wonderfully portrayed. Such great characters, I cared about each of them immensely. A quiet, meditative story, I appreciated the gentle way this story was rendered, with compassion and love. A sentimental story for sure but not written in a maudlin or dramatic way. The different ways they grieve but come together as a family, not without difficulties, but a new way to see their family as a whole. As I said, simply beautiful and touching.ARC from publisher.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am not any sort of expert in these matters, and this may be a rather patronizing thing to say, but it seems to me that this is a remarkably good piece of work from a very young author. The way Ms Henry-Jones has chosen to tell this story, with multiple perspectives and continual jumps backwards and forwards in time, runs a grave risk of confusing the reader or at least hiding the story beneath the complexity of the story-telling. But Henry-Jones maters the technique beautifully. That said, I need to mention that any story which is told in the voice of a dead person, "looking down from heaven" as it were, can never get five stars from me. But that's my limitation, not hers.