#BookReview ‘Silenced’ by Ann Claycomb

About the book…

A powerful feminist fairy tale of four women each cursed by the same abusive man. Gripping and essential, it will captivate readers of Jennifer Saint’s ‘Ariadne’ , Heather Walter’s ‘‘Malice’  and Menna van Praag’s ‘‘The Sisters Grimm’.

Four women. Four enchantments. One man. But he is no handsome prince, and this is no sugar-sweet fairy tale. Jo, Abony, Ranjani, and Maia all have something in common: they have each been cursed by the CEO of their workplace after he abused his power to prey on them. He wants them silent and uses his sinister dark magic to keep them quiet about what he did. But Jo, Abony, Ranjani and Maia are not fairy-tale princesses waiting to be rescued. They are fierce, angry women with a bond forged in pain, and they’re about to discover that they have power of their own.

In this sharply written, bitingly relevant modern fable, the magic is dark and damaging, and the women are determined to rescue themselves.

I am a sucker for fairy tale reimagining’s and when I read the synopsis of ‘Silenced’ by Ann Claycomb, I immediately added it to my must buy list.

There is such a strong thread of genuine feminist rage threaded throughout the story reflecting the lived experience of women in a top down, patriarchal society, but it never feels, when you are reading it like an ‘issue’ led tale. Rather, it reflects on how even with the ‘Me-Too’ movement, the current feminist movement, this is an ongoing battle in a ages long war, many books showing such a perspective tend to be super heavy on the exposition front, rather than being a meaningful addition to the canon of women’s rights novels.

The use of fairy tale motifs is neatly reflected in Reddit posts between the chapters of the book, an online forum focussing on how modern life and fairy tales dissect, examine, and portray women-usually as either the archetypal step-mother, evil witch or ingenue in need of rescuing. In order to reframe the narrative, the thing that is used to weaken us has to be turned into a weapon and this is the crux of ‘Silenced’.

Each of these women has had their unique character and personality taken and turned into an actual curse so that when they try and seem redemption and justice for the assaults on their bodies, hearts and minds, they have a reaction that causes harm to themselves and their loved ones.

This keeps them separate, keeps them from fighting as a cohesive force and keeps them scared. In other words it keeps them in their ‘good little girl’ box and causes no concerns to the CEO of the company, a faceless amalgamation of white privilege, who, we imagine, gloats over his ‘conquests’ in the workplace and enjoys their ongoing pain. We assume this as a reader as his perspective is never shown, his name left unspoken, his features unremarked on , paradoxically intensifying the reader’s relationship with Maia, Abony, Ranjani and Jo.

These women have been assaulted and made to behave in a way that took their consent, their autonomy, their livelihoods away and left them without recourse. One has to buy shoes every time she goes near a police station, one is threatened with harm on her mother if she talks or goes through a door or gateway that is not allowed, another regurgitates insects, and worse when she tries to talk, and the fourth, well the fourth is, in my humble opinion the worst of all but I will leave that for curious readers to find out for themselves.

How they circumvent their curses and stand up for themselves as well as realising its up to them to prevent this happening to another woman, is a path fraught with danger and possible death, this is a real world at stake despite the fantastical elements. Never does it feel twee, or shoehorned in, as a woman, I recognise the tiny acts of micro aggressions up to blatantly spoken misogyny that becomes an ‘every day’ occurrence and that comes from a place of being privileged as white and heterosexual. So to apply this to anyone who is conveniently ‘othered’ by society due to race, religion or sexuality, the very real sense of harm done is immense.

I loved the concept, the framing device and the way you plunge headlong into the lives of these four women and find them nuanced, individual and strong as hell. It was the kind of novel you pick up and don’t stop reading and in the end, in order to stop seeing yourself as a victim and see yourself as a survivor, you have to challenge the society which would frame you as such and seize back that control And this can only be done when standing shoulder to shoulder , unconditionally supporting each other.

About the author…

Ann Claycomb’s first novel, ‘The Mermaid’s Daughter’, published by Harper Collins in 2017, imagines that the Little Mermaid really is trapped as a human and passes that curse down through generations of women unable to return to the sea.

An inveterate reader of fairy tales, Ann believes in the power of Faerie, chocolate, and a good workout, in no particular order. She also wishes people would stop using the phrase “fairy tales can come true” as reassurance, because a great deal of what happens in fairy tales, especially to women, is frankly terrifying. And so Ann is drawn to retelling fairy tales to highlight the thorns around the beautiful castles and the dangers of straying off the path.

She has an MFA and an MA in English, and baffled her MA thesis committee with an argument that “Beauty and the Beast” is ruined by the Beast’s transformation at the end into just an ordinary prince. Ann lives with her husband, children, two cats, and a mostly hairless dog in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Twitter @AnnClaycomb44 @TitanBooks