A review by ms_tiahmarie
Him by Clare Empson

~This is what silence does to you. It poisons you with a slow and suffocating creep, you and those around you, husband, children, the lover you may not have. It burns from the inside out with the chill of liquid nitrogen. It steals not just your thoughts and words but your feelings too, so you are left like a wooden block trying to impersonate appropriate emotion. You can switch it on like an electric light, but you won't fool anyone. You try anyway, every day becomes like your own private street theatre as you learn the roles of wife, then mother, and act your way right through them. When you allow silence in, when you keep a secret...punishing down with both hands, then you also feed the shame that surrounds it. And shame is deadly.~