{"id":7954,"date":"2022-07-23T13:04:34","date_gmt":"2022-07-23T13:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=7954"},"modified":"2022-07-24T11:35:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-24T11:35:09","slug":"the-silent-brother","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=7954","title":{"rendered":"The Silent Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Simon Van der Velde, <\/strong>The Silent Brother <\/strong><\/em>(2022)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed by Lee Horsley<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Simon Van der Velde\u2019s The Silent Brother<\/em> is a powerfully written, deeply affecting coming of age story. It is dark, harrowing and often brutally, bone-crunchingly violent, but also throughout conveys the urgent need for loving bonds – none more important than that between Tommy Farrier and his younger brother Benjy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we first meet Tommy, he\u2019s five years old, living with his little brother, his alcoholic mam and Daryl, his vicious step-dad. This first section of the novel gives us an intensely realised picture of the frightening, near-intolerable life of the young brothers, trying to cling on to one another and to the few things that give their lives meaning. When the social services step in to remove the boys from their abusive home, their mam makes them hide. In a heart-stopping scene, jammed together at the back of a large cupboard, they try desperately to be quiet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c… he clings to the neck of my jarmas cos he knows\u2026I want him to stay. So I can hold him. So his fear can make me stronger. He knows that I\u2019m only a coward pretending to be brave and that I need him, like always. So he stays. Even when the voices are booming just outside\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the terrified Benjy remains completely silent, Tommy himself inadvertently makes a sound that leads the authorities to their hiding place. It is Benjy rather than him who is discovered and dragged away, leaving Tommy tortured by acute guilt throughout the novel. The family, changing their name to Boyle, moves to Newcastle to evade the attentions of the social workers: \u201cThe van stops and we\u2019re there, where The Social won\u2019t find us, and I\u2019m Tommy Boyle, age five-and-a-half, and I don\u2019t have a brother and I never did.\u201d Even Daryl\u2019s worst threats, however, can\u2019t erase Benjy\u2019s reality, and through all of the brutality of his later years, Tommy holds fiercely to the reality of his deep, wordless bond with Benjy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second part of the novel, a teenage Tommy struggles to find ways of surviving both at home and in the streets. Daryl\u2019s violence destroys what\u2019s left of Tommy\u2019s boyhood world: the \u201cmagic power\u201d that his mam once seemed to have is beaten out of her, and \u201cNow I understand that\u2019s how real life works.\u201d On the streets, life only seems workable if he accepts what\u2019s on offer: when he\u2019s fifteen, Maxi hands him two plastic money bags bulging with home-grown skunk and he sets off to make the deals that might at least give him a way out of his abusive home. Chosen as much as anything for his \u201cinnocent face\u201d, Tommy convinces himself he has the world\u2019s easiest job: \u201ca hundred quid a night for sitting in a posh bar and having a pint.\u201d Will his choice define him for his whole life or is there is any possibility of escape from a criminal world that consists entirely of treachery and savagery, \u201cthe booze and the drugs, the dodgy deals and stolen money\u201d?  Is it possible to \u201cchange where you\u2019re going\u201d and maybe even, if you do, to \u201cchange who you are\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Simon<\/a>
Simon Van der Velde<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Silent Brother<\/em> creates a narrative that brings readers painfully close to Tommy\u2019s struggle. We\u2019re compelled throughout by his sense of failing all of those closest to him, by the omnipresent threat of violence and the occasional glimmer of redemptive possibilities. Even recognising that he was \u201calways screwed\u201d from the moment he chose his path, he searches for a hidden inner strength that might be reclaimed. As he drives on to face his adversaries, he thinks back, \u201ctrying to get in touch with little Tommy Boyle. Not with the guilt and the blame, but with the fight. The kid that made Daryl break his finger before he\u2019d say he didn\u2019t have a brother.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See Simon’s piece on his Top 5 Crime Books in the July Crimeculture.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon Van der Velde, The Silent Brother (2022) Reviewed by Lee Horsley Simon Van der Velde\u2019s The Silent Brother is a powerfully written, deeply affecting<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Silent Brother<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":779,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7954"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8001,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7954\/revisions\/8001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}