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A review by screamdogreads
The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins
4.0
"There was a silence. Henry had thought that he had become an amateur of silence, in all its timbres and guises; but this had an unfamiliar completeness, an aching quality that was both expectancy and ending. He could not breathe, but he did not need to breathe. He had seen Sir Edward understand. For this eternal instant, it was enough."
The Silence Factory is a dazzling, classical, old-fashioned gothic novel. It's utterly delightful, spinning a macabre web of grandeur with which it captures readers. It is a poetic, beautiful and intricately plotted novel, imposing and fierce yet elegant too. There's something so enthralling about The Silence Factory, it's entirely arresting, the Victorian Era so starkly captured upon the page. It reads as if it could almost be a Victorian Gothic sci-fi/fantasy tale. It's teeming in the fantastical and otherworldly. And, it's all really rather seamless, so many brilliant things are woven together without ever feeling clunky or exaggerated.
Historical fiction, for me, is something so very hit or miss. The plots always so sound captivating, and yes, I appreciate, as a genre, historical fiction is a much slower told category of story, but most of them fail to deliver on their promises. The Silence Factory, however, is told with lashings of gothic gorgeousness and decadence. It's both charming and whimsical yet dangerous and obsessive. Bridget Collins regales us readers with bewitching Victorian ambience without shying away from the tawdry reality of the times. The sickening workplace conditions, the lack of rights thrust upon women, children and the poor, the harsh industrial progress and the corruption funding it, all is detailed with a sobering clarity.
The Silence Factory is a dazzling, classical, old-fashioned gothic novel. It's utterly delightful, spinning a macabre web of grandeur with which it captures readers. It is a poetic, beautiful and intricately plotted novel, imposing and fierce yet elegant too. There's something so enthralling about The Silence Factory, it's entirely arresting, the Victorian Era so starkly captured upon the page. It reads as if it could almost be a Victorian Gothic sci-fi/fantasy tale. It's teeming in the fantastical and otherworldly. And, it's all really rather seamless, so many brilliant things are woven together without ever feeling clunky or exaggerated.
Historical fiction, for me, is something so very hit or miss. The plots always so sound captivating, and yes, I appreciate, as a genre, historical fiction is a much slower told category of story, but most of them fail to deliver on their promises. The Silence Factory, however, is told with lashings of gothic gorgeousness and decadence. It's both charming and whimsical yet dangerous and obsessive. Bridget Collins regales us readers with bewitching Victorian ambience without shying away from the tawdry reality of the times. The sickening workplace conditions, the lack of rights thrust upon women, children and the poor, the harsh industrial progress and the corruption funding it, all is detailed with a sobering clarity.
"He looked down; darkness flickered around his shoes, sparkling, sending black sparks flying up towards his face. For a moment all he felt was wonder. Any moment now the veils around him would tear apart, and the world beyond them would appear; a world of infinite space and stars, and unimaginable depth and dark. The spiders were the gatekeepers, they spun the doorway into it, and in the blazing dark Madeleine beckoned, yes - or love, anyway, redemption, no more death-"
It's a really rather sad and dazzling sort of novel, fascinating and horrific. There's an eerie air of disharmony that runs through the story and the eccentric characters are so compulsively readable. Novels such as this one are a rarity to stumble upon, it seems that Collins can never miss, she has created a true masterpiece of gothic wonder. It's all so intense and marvelous, a delight for the soul. What really makes this book, what pushes this far above and beyond so many other gothic historical fiction novels before it, is that everything works together, the dual timelines, the spiders and their silk, the imposing factory, the ambience, the characters, it's all woven together so perfectly. What an astounding novel this is.
It was a spell, or a miracle. The dog, the man, the tickling clock were extinguished as cleanly as a mirage. After a moment he clutched at the cloth, unnerved, in case the whole world had disappeared; but when he was sure that he could still hear, and the cacophony of the city continued regardless, he let it fall again. He felt the silence flood into him like a long, easy breath."