Welcome back, everyone. I feel honoured to have been invited along on the book tour for The Unheard by Anne Worthington. Thanks to Helen Richardson and Configo Publishing for my gifted copy of the book, in exchange for my honest review.
‘My experiences as a photographer are one reason why I write. The people I’ve photographed have touched and altered me. The germ of the idea for The Unheard was an image of an old man bent over a bed, crying. It was like seeing one frame of a filmstrip, there was so much that was unexplained. The writing that followed uncovered what happened before, during and after the image took place’ – ANNE WORTHINGTON
The Unheard is the powerful and intensely moving debut novel by acclaimed documentary photographer Anne Worthington. It is a novel about memory, and what happens to the experiences that are too much for us, but we are unable to leave behind.
We meet Tom Pullan in 1999 when he has dementia. He lives with his wife, May. The
visitors who come to the house aren’t the people he remembers. He would like to see the people that remain in his memory. The visitors say they have come to help but they only seem to cause trouble.
Fifteen years earlier, in 1984, Tom is working in an office amid sweeping redundancies across the country. His office is told there are going to be cuts and Tom is convinced he will be one of those who will lose their job. And he is sure that at the root of this, the person who’s orchestrating these changes is the prime minister. He watches her every day talking about cuts, all the while wielding an axe in her hands.
In 1931, Tom’s family walked away from their house leaving everything behind. They not only lost a home, but his brother has gone, and no one says a word. Now, he must do what he can to keep his father happy, and his father is never happy. Tom goes looking for his brother every day. He waits for his brother to come home because people don’t just disappear. Sometimes, waiting is all you can do when you can’t make sense of the world.
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?
My Review
I saw the cover to this book, and it resonated with me immediately. Along with the title ‘The Unheard’. I knew I was in for a read, which would have a big effect on me.
Anne Worthington introduces the reader to Tom. An old man who spends his time living in a world that he sees through a haze. He is frightened as he cannot make sense of everything around him as he used to. We are then taken back in time to his younger days. We are witness to the stress and strains he experienced along the way.
I read this book, and my own grandmother flashed into my mind. She wasn’t diagnosed with anything, but Tom’s hazy view of his life right at the start reminded me of things she would say. My heart was aching for Tom and May, his wife, who has her own perspective, too. I couldn’t help but feel like they could be my grandparents.
The depth and layers to this story touched me. I found it poignant and reflective. Even his daughters perspective is given, from Toms younger years. My heart was just stamped on time and time again as I read.
Anne Worthington has so skilfully woven The Unheard that I will never forget this book. It was so vivid in the telling that the images sprung to my mind in stark black and white, too!
Not only is she a successful and talented photographer, but she can also write a book that hits as hard as she intended. I am chuffed to have discovered her and even happier that she is from the same city as I am! I am looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.
Author Bio
ANNE WORTHINGTON is a documentary photographer and writer. She grew up in Blackpool in the Northwest of England before moving to Manchester. Living in the inner-city area of Hulme during the time when Manchester was at the centre of the UK music scene, she became part of the mix of artists, ex-students and squatters that made the partly abandoned blocks of flats their own. It was in Hulme where the underground music and art was being made. She became part of the Dogs of Heaven collective that produced large-scale art performances. It was during this time that she first picked up a camera and took photographs of the iconic estate before it was demolished, marking the end of an era of squat culture. Anne went on to become a documentary photographer and over the next twenty years, produced a body of work that highlighted the conditions of housing, and the effects of social and economic change that had begun during the 1980s.
Anne Worthington was awarded an MA Creative Writing with Distinction in 2018. She was a finalist for Iceland Writers Retreat, 2015, and shortlisted for Fish Flash Fiction Prize, 2018. The Unheard won the Michael Schmidt Prize in 2018.
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