
ABOUT THIS BOOK
PUBLISHER: riverrun
ISBN: 9781529435573
RRP: £20.00
PAGES: 352
PUBLICATION DATE:
April 10, 2025
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A Granite Silence
By Nina Allan
A Granite Silence is an exploration – a journey through time to a particular house, in a particular street, Urquhart Road, Aberdeen in 1934, where eight-year-old Helen Priestly lives with her mother and father.
Among this long, grey corridor of four-storey tenements, a daunting expanse of granite, working families are squashed together like pickled herrings in their narrow flats. Here are Helen’s neighbours: the Topps, the Josses, the Mitchells, the Gordons, the Donalds, the Coulls and the Hunts.
Returning home from school for her midday meal, Helen is sent by her mother Agnes to buy a loaf from the bakery at the end of the street. Agnes never sees her daughter alive again.
Nina Allan explores the aftermath of Helen’s disappearance, turning a probing eye to the close-knit neighbourhood – where everyone knows everyone, at least by sight – and with subtlety and sympathy, explores the intricate layers of truth and falsehood that can coexist in one moment of history.
Full of echoes, allusions and eerie diversions, A Granite Silence is an investigation into a notorious true crime case, but also a stylish, imaginative inquiry into who gets to tell a story, how it is told, and why.
Nina Allan
Nina Allan is a novelist and critic. Her novels have previously won the British Science Fiction Award, the Kitschies Red Tentacle and the Grand Prix de L’imaginaire. She has also been nominated as a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Hugo Award. Born in London, Nina now lives and works in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute. Her most recent novel, The Good Neighbours, is a crime story set amidst the beauty and remoteness of the island landscape. Her novel Conquest was published by riverrun/Quercus in May 2023.