Tom Pullan knows that the people who visit him are trying to tell him something, but he cannot remember what. He knows the faces in his memory, the ones he loved, are not the ones around him now.
We are drawn into a world where brutal events from the past lie just below the surface. Plunged inside the characters’ heads, we experience their thoughts and feelings: sorrow and rage they cannot share; the intense feelings and turbulent sexuality of a teenage girl; a boy who saw something that casts a long shadow over his life.
What do we do with a lifetime of unheard truths, questions and fears? The Unheard is a novel about memory, and what happens to the experiences that are too much for us but we are unable to leave behind.
‘There is a rhythmic, mesmeric power - perhaps even a haunting musicality - to Anne Worthington's prose style. Here, she gives voice to her unheard characters in a poignant, evocative story that is an intensely moving modern allegory of our times.’
Kerry Hadley-Pryce
'Involving, saddening and enraging, Worthington’s novel gives voice to a generation of men who were taught to be uncomplaining, remaining attentive to the costs of such stoicism while being careful not to censure it herself.'
Desmond Bullen, Northern Soul
Anne Worthington lives in the north of England. She is a documentary photographer and writer. The Unheard is her first novel.
