Saturday, March 28, 2020

Daisy Pearce's "The Silence"

Daisy Pearce was born in Cornwall and grew up on a smallholding surrounded by hippies. She read Stephen King’s Cujo and The Hamlyn Book of Horror far too young and has been fascinated with the macabre ever since.

The set-up for Pearce's new novel, The Silence:
Stella Wiseman was a child TV star, but there’s nothing glamorous about her life now. Alone in her thirties, she’s lost her parents and her friends and she’s stuck in a dead-end job. But just as she hits rock bottom she meets Marco, a charismatic older man who offers to get her back on her feet. He seems too good to be true.

Is he?
Here the author sets the atmosphere of one possible adaptation of the book:
When I visualise the opening credits of The Silence I see a dark screen, a lightbulb and a moth, butting into it over and over again. Sometimes we’re irresistibly drawn to things that hurt us, unable to pull ourselves away even when it burns. That’s how Stella begins her story in The Silence, a moth drawn toward a bright, painful light. As the opening credits roll and the camera pulls back the song ‘Bad Ritual’ by Timber Timbre plays. That’s it. That’s the scene.
Follow Daisy Pearce on Twitter.

The Page 69 Test: The Silence.

Writers Read: Daisy Pearce.

--Marshal Zeringue