Book Club - Helena Fox’s The Quiet and The Loud

Final Draft - Great Conversations

Today’s book club is Helena Fox’s The Quiet and The Loud.

Helena’ debut novel, 2019’s How it Feels to Float was an incredible exploration of mental health and resilience, garnering the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Literature and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.

In The Quiet and The Loud Fox again takes us into the messy, complex and wonderful world of being young, showing the reader that while it will present us with seemingly immense problems it will also surround us with people who can support us.

George is going to be there for Tess. Sure their other friends had big questions when Tess decided to get pregnant at eighteen, but George will be there for her just like she always has been.

George will be there for Tess just like she’s there for her grandfather, her mums, Laz. George is even trying to find a way to be there for her estranged dad when he calls her out of the blue to drop some world shattering news.

George is going to be there for them all because she doesn’t know how not to be there for them all and she doesn’t know what to do with these feelings for Calliope, the new girl on the beach. The new girl who’s giving George feelings that might just be for her.

The Quiet and the Loud throws us headfirst, hands bound and with no life preserver into the life of George. George finds her world is too often, too noisy. The only place she can get any quiet is out on the water.

Now even paddling is getting complicated as memories resurface. Memories of when she was younger. Memories of how her dad could be erratic; like the night he took George out on the water in a canoe and left her there to go swimming.

Through George’s narration we are taken, sometimes too-close, into the world of complex trauma. George’s childhood has left her with difficulty managing the relationships in her life. She has trouble saying no, trouble keeping enough of herself quiet to stay above water.

Helena Fox’s writing has a way of making this ‘too loud, too close’ claustrophobia feel incredibly real. George’s anxieties become our own as we are immersed in her world and we are threatened with overwhelm as she tries to keep it all straight.

The novel shows us what it means to feel the pressures of everything weighing in. Now only is George struggling to manage her best friend's pregnancy, her dad’s news and a new relationship but fires are now threatening to surround Sydney even as they engulf parts of the state and the country.

The Quiet and The Loud takes all of this in and more importantly it takes it seriously because the pressures of the world are serious, even when you’re only eighteen and people want to tell you they know better.

This is a novel that dives deep into mental health and doesn’t emerge with trite solutions, rather it sits with the complexity even when it feels overwhelming. I found it a rough, immersive but ultimately worthwhile read because it showed me something that too often we only suspect; everyone’s doing it tough (at least sometimes) but that doesn’t mean we aren’t worthy of the time for ourselves.

This one’s fresh (today is publication day) so go check out Helena Fox’s The Quiet and The Loud