Such beautiful writing. Louise really connects with her reader. The storyline itself is rather sinister in places but I believe that adds to the tension. This is Louise’s best novel yet. So powerful, incredibly intriguing and her build up of each character is spot on. There was a particular exchange between two characters about violence and abuse in a relationship that really spoke out to me. I have often thought myself ‘why don’t they just leave?’ and this particular character made me see how it isn’t as simple as that. The ending was everything I wanted and more. It shows how far people will go to protect those they love.
I loved this book so much and I highly recommend.

Wow just wow! After the Silence was just incredible from start finish. I simply couldn't put it down, the plot kept me captivated with its numerous twists and turns. I love Louise O'Neill's style of writing, she is able to create characters that have so many layers of complexity and are simply unforgettable. This has easily been one of my favourite books of the year and I can't wait to read more from the author in the future.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC

The phrase that comes to mind in describing this novel is The Sins of the Father. It is very much a family drama with a claustrophobic feeling throughout. Most of the characters are horrible and although we find out their motivations by the end of the story i find it quite depressing the way people don't seem to break the cycle of their upbringing. I couldn't really find much sympathy for the main characters and they infuriated me especially when the main female character gave up her childhood friendships so easily, people she had previously relied on so much.
I loved the remote Irish setting especially the short chapters when the island seemed to have a life of its own. There were a lot of Irish words used which meant I had to google quite a lot - I had no idea what grinds meant until I looked it up!
I did enjoy this book but am definitely conflicted about it. Usually I enjoy flawed characters but these ones just seemed a bit too gothic horror cliches for my liking.

Brilliant, different, heartstopping - what an excellent book. It’s a story about death, love and psychological abuse. The characters are believable and I really cared about what was happening to them. The elements of the Irish language just helped to set the tone. Do read this book!!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - although I don't think the characters were particularly likable. I had worked out the ending before I got there but not too far before!! I enjoyed the different timelines and thought it worked really well. Recommended.

Every time you think Louise O'Neill can't get any more awesome, she goes ahead and does it again. After the Silence explores domestic violence, coercive control, emotional abuse and social dynamics. At its heart is the story of the murder of a young woman in a remote and tight-knit island community, killed at a party up at 'the big house'. There's a classic murder mystery element to it all, because the murder took place during a storm, so nobody was able to get on or off the island, meaning that the pool of suspects is small. Despite this, nobody is ever charged, although the local community come to their own conclusions about who is to blame. The novel is based around the making of a documentary about the case, ten years on, perfectly tying in with our modern day fascinations with true crime and cold case mysteries. Without ever preaching or breaking character, the author brings important questions and issues into play, all bound together with a sense of claustrophobia and threat.

I have read two novels by Louis O'neill, I loved his pen so much.
When I read the summary of his latest novel I was expecting to find themes totally differents to what we usually find in his narratives, a thriller. Who killed Nessa Crowley ten years ago ?
But the author surprised me with the treatment she did. Through the character of Keelin Kinsella we find the themes of domestic violence in several forms.
As for all my readings of Louise O'Neill, I felt tension, pain, it’s a painful reading but impossible to stop until the end. A necessary reading that puts the reader face to complex and difficult societal topics without sparing him.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Based on the remote, insular island of Inisrun, this book centres on a true crime documentary that is being made, about the murder of a girl ten years earlier. Nessa Crowley was a gorgeous young girl with the world at her feet, until one fateful night at a birthday party at Hawthorn House. Nessa is found, dead in the garden, in the aftermath of a huge storm that has cut the island off temporarily. Who killed her? Will the documentary be able to solve the mystery? And will Keelin or Henry Kinsella reveal what they know about the crime?

This book is great!! I’m a fan of Louise O’Neill already, but she just keeps getting better and better! Dealing with topical themes such as coercive control and women who suffer from domestic abuse or intimate partner terrorism, the tension builds throughout this tale, leaving a lingering sense of unease as the story proceeds, leaving you constantly wrong footed when trying to work out what actually happened, who is to blame, and what people’s motivations are for their actions. The characters are well written - and you can understand their actions, even if you don’t agree with them. The tension is very skilfully pitched and just keeps building throughout - I read this in two sittings. Extremely well written, I would recommend this to anyone - a solid five star read!

WOW! This book is genuinely phenomenal. It has so much to offer . The characters are all so believable and the stories in this book are really credible. It deals with very heavy topics such as domestic violence and coercive control, in a sensitive manner. It is very noticeable the amount of research that Louise put into this book, and as always her talent shines through. This is a phenomenal book and I cannot recommend it enough.

I was floored by both Only Ever Yours and Asking For It and so was incredibly excited by the prospect of Louise O’Neill’s latest. After the Silence ventures more into thriller territory than these previous titles. A decade has passed since the mysterious death of a young woman on the island of Inisrún and the novel is structured around the interviews carried out by two filmmakers who are making a documentary about the infamous Crowley girl case. Central to the story is Keelin Kinsella, a survivor of a violent marriage whose second marriage doesn’t look to be any prettier. It lacks the bite of O’Neill’s earlier novels and I struggled to connect with the central character but is an engaging whodunnit nonetheless.

I love Louise O’Neill’s writing style; it’s clever, absorbing and accomplished.
This new offering is set off the coast of Cork and is an atmospheric story full of dark secrets.
It’s a very good book and one that fans of Louise will definitely enjoy.

This was not my sort of book. I struggled to finish it to be fair and always feel sad when I have not got a lot of good things to say about a book as the author has probably put their heart and soul into the writing of it. I know there are men and woman who dominate their partners but I felt in this case it did not come across as Keelin was particularly bothered about it in one sense. I am afraid I could not warm to the characters at all

<i>After the Silence</i> is an interesting locked room mystery, where the locked room is much larger than usual - an island which, due to a ferocious storm, is impossible to reach or leave on the night of the murder. After ten years, an eager young documentary crew arrive to gather information, and interview the islanders on the murder.

I enjoyed the varying narrative style here, flicking from third person, to first-person plural, to interview style, whilst also narrating events as they happened ten years ago, then returning to the present. It created huge engagement for me, whilst constantly dribbling small drops of information to be pieced together, and creating a delicious amount of tension.

As far as the mystery itself goes, it’s not too difficult to point the finger at the culprit pretty early on, or at least whittle it down to just a few. But this isn’t really a murder mystery novel, it’s much much more hideous.

What’s far more important here, and arguably much better than the mystery, is O’Neill’s exploration of domestic abuse and its characteristics. Although the term itself implies physical hurt, we’re reminded by this story that abuse can take many forms, often psychological forms which leave no evidence on skin. It’s a terrifying ordeal for victims, who begin to question their own minds and behaviour, often reaching the conclusion that they themselves are to blame.

O’Neill also comments on misogyny, and how quietly it can sneak its way into becoming a normal reaction from any gender. Why didn’t she just leave her abuser? Why did she let that young woman into her home? Why has she aged so terribly, look at the Botox, whilst her husband has only become distinguished with age? O’Neill’s skill in showing us the subtle ways these things can manifest is expertly done, and truly, truly terrifying.

It’s twisty, it’s turny, it’s a deep character study with a thrill to its style. O’Neill presents an important work, and also shows us the truth is sickening, but holding it inside of you is a far worse ordeal.

On the day of Henry and Keelin Kinsella's wild party at their big house a violent storm engulfed the island of Inisrun, cutting it off from the mainland. When morning broke Nessa Crowley's lifeless body lay in the garden, her last breath silenced by the music and the thunder. The killer couldn't have escaped Inisrun, but on-one was charged with the murder. The mystery that surrounded the death of Nessa remained hidden. But the islanders knew who to blame for the crime that changed them forever. Ten years later a documentary crew arrives, there to lift the lid off the Kinsella's carefully constructed lives, determined to find evidence that will prove Henry's guilt and Keelin's complicity in the murder of beautiful Nessa.

This is a good read and I think it could have been great but the impact was lost due to the book's length. This is way too long and resulted in the plot becoming laborious the more it progressed. This is a real shame as O'Neill has written a taut, claustrophobic plot that had the potential to be incredibly intense. I still found the read eerie and I was still gripped by the read but I always felt like there was something missing and I found myself waiting for something that never materialised.

I did really like the writing style for this. O'Neill features chapters that are interview segments from the documentary alongside the chapters progressing the plot. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview segments and only wish there had been more. I actually think this could have worked really well had there been a lot more interview sections. As a whole I enjoyed how O'Neill chose to depict the plot and for the most part it did keep my interest.

The plot does feature twists however they are fairly obvious and O'Neill sets them up so you can see them coming. I still enjoyed them , it just did not invigorate the read. The characters are good although not especially likeable. I did find myself missing someone to root for. Overall, this was a good read but nothing to set it apart and make it outstanding.

'After the Silence' is eerie and O'Neill writes about some very hard hitting subjects. This had the potential to be sensational but fell somewhat short.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy.

Many, many secrets that after ten years start to unfold. Who are the demons and who are the nice guys? This is not immediately obvious. A lovely story set on an island off the coast of Cork.

It hurts me so deeply that I didn't like this book.

There's a lot to unpack here. Firstly, I really hate seeing passive female characters who are subject to a lot of abuse - mental, physical and emotional - and it's a trope that is so common in thrillers because it creates tension and conflict. Psychological thrillers are such an over-saturated genre that to step away from it, you have to create something different, and that's not what this novel did. All of the characters in this book are unlikeable - with the exception perhaps to those who appear very briefly. Whether that was a deliberate choice or not, I don't know, but when you combine it with incredibly triggering and intense material that doesn't seem to have much probable cause, you wonder how you're supposed to empathise with these characters.

I'm just ready for this trope to die a slow death and for some originality to appear in the psychological thriller genre. Please.

On a more technical note, this book is a mess. The writing often disappears into tangents that don't add much to the plot and the sudden jump from the present to the past effectively destroys the natural flow of the book. The framing of a documentary crew coming to explore a buried murder is interesting enough, but there's such a deluge of information packed into every single page that it gives you a headache. O'Neill has so many plot strands, so many different things trying to be woven in together and it just doesn't work.

This book exhausted me, it frustrated me and it ultimately just made me very angry that a very talented author produced a book that falls back on common thriller tropes in what could have been an excellent book.

A racing read with some nice twists, and a thought-provoking look at coercive control. Louise O'Neill seems to specialise in slightly 'off' heroines that you don't like much but can't help getting involved with, and Keelin Kinsella is no exception. One of those have-it-all wives of a wealthy notable, we gradually realise that, though she lives in a drop-dead architect-designed pad on the remarkable island of Inisrun, her birth=place, she and her husband are shunned by the locals and all is not at all well with their marriage. It's all connected to the death of one of the three beautiful Crowley Sisters. The frame of the story is the making of a TV-film documentary by two young Australians, investigating the death, and the whole thing put me in mind of the brilliant podcast West Cork, which investigated the death of a beautiful lone French woman in the same part of Ireland where this novel is set. The main suspect in this real case is an eccentric character with a troublingly compliant wife....
If I'm honest, I enjoyed the podcast a lot more than this novel. I found most of the characters two-dimensional, picked off the shelf, and I wasn't surprised to read the extent of the acknowledgements the author gave to those who helped with her research into coercive control, and the help she got with the Irish language phrases. The bits that rang most true for me were the intriguing short chapters narrating the views of the islanders, and the way the islanders gave Keelin and Henry the cold shoulder, despite nothing being proven against them. But much of it was just a bit too gossipy and under-written for my taste, and a bit frustrating to read, as O'Neill is a skilful writer, evoking place very successfully. It felt like a writer who had too beady an eye on the commercial success - but good luck to her, it will work well with book clubs, I'm sure.

I always love Louise O'Neill's books. They seem to me to say something true in a way that few other books do. Even when her characters are flawed and confused and make decisions that I'm longing for them not to make, I understand them. I recognise myself in them. O'Neill is a profoundly feminist writer and yet she doesn't make the mistake of portraying her female characters as perfect. She simply allows them to be complicated and human, whilst at the same time dealing with highly relevant wider issues – in this case, domestic violence and coercive control.

So, I liked and sympathised with Keelin, despite what some reviewers have described as her passivity (and I couldn't help but feel that those reviewers missed the point – you only have to compare scenes of Keelin past with Keelin present to realise that it isn't 'passivity' but an utter lack of options). It becomes gradually clear over the course of the book that she is trapped, and that the particular form of coercive control being used to trap her is all the more effective because she knows what will come to light if she ever tries to escape.

Speaking of which, in a first for O'Neill, this book is a murder mystery as well. I enjoyed this aspect of it, though perhaps if you read primarily for the solution of a crime, this book isn't for you. It kept me guessing; the answer was obvious in retrospect but there were two other possible solutions that were equally plausible until quite late in the book.

A sad and haunting book, which I would thoroughly recommend if you like fiction that makes you think.

This was a truly engrossing read. I started it yesterday morning and finished it about an hour ago. Having read all of Louise's previous novels, I thought I knew what to expect with this one - a dark, gripping story packed full of aching tragedy. Whilst that is all present and correct, there's the added layer of the documentary format. The story has a main timeline, 10 years after a murder which haunted a small island and changed the perfect lives of Henry and Keelin Kinsella for ever. Our 'in' is Kinsella, a woman in her late 40s who has become increasingly dependent on her rich and charming husband. Nessa Crowley died at Kinsella's birthday party and, although it's never been proven, everyone knows the Kinsella's are to blame - they just don't know how or why.
Noah and Jake, two documentary makers from Australia, arrive at the island to make a documentary they hope will answer those questions.
The novel's structure reflects Keelin's mental state, hoping between different stages of the past - these are never marked with 'x months/years ago', we are left to work that out for ourselves. That's one of the many ambiguous parts of the book that combine to make a deliciously compelling and insidious read.

** Mild thematic spoilers below **

Although this is being marketed as a murder mystery/psychological thriller, what makes it stand out is not the revelation (there are so few suspects, anyway, in a tiny island community that it's not hard to unravel) but the acute and genuinely disturbing portrait of domestic abuse and coercive control.

Domestic violence has been extensively explored in fiction in recent years, but the domestic coercion that O'Neill is uncovering here (and the afterword is a tribute to the research behind the novel) is so much more insidious, leaving mental rather than physical scars and thus rendering the victims even more isolated, even questioning their own mental well-being.

As was the case with her 'Asking For It', O'Neill uses her fiction as a vehicle for increasing our understanding of a phenomenon that deserves more understanding (not to mention more public funding). Once again, the book is spot on in relation to the (not so) subtle ways misogyny plays out in our media and cultural modes of thinking from gendered ageing and appearance ('there were no comments about Henry's appearance, she noticed. He was allowed to have aged within the last ten years, but for her to have done so was a crime against humanity') to blaming the wife when a husband has an affair. As a character in the book says so aptly, 'Don't you think it's interesting that we always ask "Why do these women stay?" We never think to ask, "Why are these men violent?" or "Why won't these men stop terrorising their partners?" '

While there is so much good stuff in this book, it does take some patience especially at the start where various timelines and PoVs are flung at us in rather confusing fashion so do bear that in mind. The documentary film-makers are a bit of a distraction, and having one of them the victim of abuse feels perhaps a bit glib. If you're in this merely for the crime/murder story then this is very slow burn in that respect. But, then, it's so much more than a conventional mystery - and so much scarier.