Whispers Through a Megaphone

As seen:
By Rachel Elliott
avg rating
4 reviews
Miriam hasn’t left her house in three years, and cannot raise her voice above a whisper. But today she has had enough, and is finally ready to rejoin the outside world.
Meanwhile, Ralph has made the mistake of opening a closet door, only to discover with a shock that his wife Sadie doesn’t love him, and never has. And so he decides to run away.
Miriam and Ralph’s chance meeting in a wood during stormy weather marks the beginning of an amusing, restorative friendship, while Sadie takes a break from Twitter to embark on an intriguing adventure of her own. As their collective story unfolds, each of them seeks to better understand the objects of their affection, and their own hearts, timidly refusing to stand still and accept the chaos life throws at them. Filled with wit and sparkling prose, Whispers Through a Megaphone explores our attempts to meaningfully connect with ourselves and others, in an often deafening world – when sometimes all we need is a bit of silence.
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What a lovely, quirky, witty and ultimately heart warming novel. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's nice and easy to read, gently witty and highly entertaining but still tackles some difficult issues. It would be a great one for a reading group and I recommend it highly.
Our group mostly loved this book. We were fortunate enough to win afternoon tea with Rachel Elliott. She was great, so relaxed and easy to talk to. She even sent us her spotify playlist which she listened to all the time when writing Whispers. We weren't distracted by the use of Twitter, which we thought was a comment on the times we live in, and how much people reveal about their private lives through social media. It's an easy read too, and thought provoking. A great first novel. We await Rachel's next with baited...
Read more...Out of all the characters we disliked Frances (in spite of her mental health problems) finding her calculating and malicious. She had little regard for Miriam at all. Due to our dislike of France's we felt that her suicide was a final act of defiant control. She knew that Miriam would be scarred forever. With reference to the quotation from Charlotte's Web, we felt that as humans we are multi-faceted and responsive to the changing environment around us, thus we are always ' making it up'. We had little sympathy with Sadie. She knew she was lesbian; she put aside...
Read more...A darkly whimsical and unlikely tale. I quite enjoyed the story itself but found the writing somewhat staccato which irritated a little. The characters had so much angst, whether justified or not, it was hard to believe they were only in their 30s. It left me with more questions then answers for instance how the intervening 20+ years were spent by Miriam and her mother. How did Matthew find out the address and yet his father seemed not to know anything about Miriam and Frances, etc. I found the names too silly, Swoon? Parsley? My book group had some mixed...
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