Close-up of the book cover. Photo: Roundfire Books
‘The Silence Diaries’, by Jennifer Kavanagh
Review by Joseph Jones
I should begin with an honest disclosure: I was duty-bound to read this short novel. The author had asked me to interview her as part of its launch, so it became a work task. Fortunately, it was no chore.
I’m confident I would have read it anyway. Jennifer Kavanagh has been a perceptive and sensitive communicator on the Spirit-led life for some time. Her Heart of Oneness was, as Richard Rohr put it, ‘a wise and welcome reminder of the mutuality and interconnectedness at the heart of the universe’. But despite a career as a literary agent (‘What I loved was talent spotting’, she once told the Friend), this is only her second work of fiction. What, then, of her own talent?
From the start it’s clear that we are being guided by someone who understands how stories work. Suzie and Aubrey – Orbs – are a couple in their early thirties trying to make a life in London. So we begin with a universal tale, one that looks hard at the everyday maintenance of a modern relationship in a modern world. The nine-to-five, the family pressures, the bills, jealousies and small mercies will be familiar to many readers. But each of the pair is distinctive, too: full and flawed and, well, novel – remarkable in a way that encourages investigation.
Suzie is a financial journalist, but has a second life as a ventriloquist. Her puppet, Bruce, has the tone and manner of Geoffrey Boycott, a harsh but authentic voice that Suzie struggles to match in her own personal life. Orbs works for a bank – not quite the city career he lets his parents believe in – but feels a stronger calling to Foolery (think Shakespeare, or the noble role of the court jesters who spoke truth to power). While Suzie uses Bruce to – perhaps – conceal her own true voice, Orbs’ Fool practice is one of silence. He too has a difficulty with expressing himself when out of character.
This set-up might imply some neat Quakerly subtext or consideration, but the author is never so didactic. Silence is a significant character in the book, but not a simple one. Orbs likes to walk labyrinths, one way of finding solace in the city, but the heart of the story is in its wary approach to things unsaid – the septic sore of a secret, or its partner, the lie.
The author is herself a member of a community of fools. She knows well enough that what we understand as ‘silly’ is closely linked to the German selig – ‘blessed’. The journey from one to the other is through innocence, a naivety that is open rather than ignorant. ‘The great secret of the successful fool,’ said the author Isaac Asimov, ‘is that [s/]he is no fool at all.’ This isn’t a book with a narrow Quakerly moral, but it does reward a thoughtful reader.
