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by Helena Fox
A heartbreaking, hopeful, and timely novel about facing family secrets, healing from trauma, and falling in love, from the award-winning author of How It Feels to Float.
George's life is loud. On the water, though, with everything hushed above and below, she is steady, silent. Then her estranged dad says he needs to talk, and George's past begins to wake up, looping around her ankles, trying to drag her under.
But there's no time to sink. George's best friend, Tess, is about to become, officially, a teen mom, her friend Laz is in despair about the climate crisis, her gramps would literally misplace his teeth if not for her, and her moms fill the house with fuss and chatter. Before long, heat and smoke join the noise as distant wildfires begin to burn.
George tries to stay steady. When her father tells her his news and the painful memories roar back to life, George turns to Calliope, the girl who has just cartwheeled into her world and shot it through with colors. And it's here George would stay—quiet and safe—if she could. But then Tess has her baby, and the earth burns hotter, and the past just will not stay put.
A novel about the contours of friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma, and love, and about our hopeless, hopeful world, Helena Fox's gorgeous follow-up to How It Feels to Float explores the stories we suppress and the stories we speak—and the healing that comes when we voice the things we've kept quiet for so long.
"Helena Fox explores trauma, guilt and self-advocacy in this compelling and arresting novel... . Vivid imagery is paired with evocative prose and lyric poems, through which George comes to understand that 'you don't have to look after everyone, or protect people who have hurt you." —Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"Lyrical and evocative ... Vivid ... Laced throughout [are] engaging descriptions of Georgia's burgeoning romance." —Kirkus Reviews
"A sensitive portrayal of complex PTSD. Flashbacks and lyrical descriptions of George's art add further dimension." —Booklist
This information about The Quiet and the Loud was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Helena Fox lives by the ocean on Dharawal Country in Wollongong, Australia. She mentors young writers and runs writing workshops to support mental health. Helena's debut novel, How It Feels to Float, won the Prime Minister's Literary Award and Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Writing for Young Adults in Australia, and was a Kirkus Best Book of the Year and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year in the U.S. Helena received her MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. She can be found mostly on Instagram at @helenafoxoz, posting pictures of the sea and talking about kindness.
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