I have recently finished reading Lloyd Jones’s book, A History of Silence: A memoir. Lloyd Jones is the author of the gripping Mister Pip which starred Hugh Laurie in the book’s movie interpretation.
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| Auckland Libraries collection. |
Jones relates the fascinating journey he went on to discover his mother’s family, something she claimed to know nothing about. In his childhood was the shadowy figure of his estranged grandmother, bitterly declaimed by his mother, but there was nothing further. The silence in the title is the layers upon layers of blankness about his family history and the silence he lived in with his working class parents. Theirs was a house with no family photos and no family stories.
The tragedy of the earthquake that struck Christchurch in 2011 lead Lloyd to investigate his own foundations and family past, a search that takes him from Wales to a devastating court transcript.
The book makes compelling reading and is an interesting read for family historians. Click through to reviews in the Telegraph and in Australian Book Review. There are borrowable copies available from Auckland Libraries.
