THE SILENCE FACTORY
by Bridget Collins (HarperCollins, $36.99)
In the mid-1800s in the fictional town of Telverton, Devon, the charismatic Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy is trying to commercialise the production of a delicate silk woven by spiders on a remote Greek Island.
Sir Edward meets Henry, a young widower who comes looking for an audiology test for his young daughter, who is congenitally deaf. Using his substantial charm, he enlists Henry, who has a gift for words, to sell the appeal of this extraordinary silk – it has incredible silencing powers – to wary investors and the public. We soon discover it was not Sir Edward’s uncle who found the
