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'Unspeakable' published in paperback
Unspeakable will be published in paperback in the UK on 8th February 2020.
Unspeakable will be published in paperback in the UK on 8th February 2020.
Here's what some people have been saying about it.
“A personal study of silence . . . As a teenager, Harriet Shawcross stopped speaking for a year. Her attempt to make sense of that experience investigates the essence of language itself . . . Part memoir, part investigative journalism, Unspeakable is a deeply felt attempt at making sense of this period in her life, and of how others manage when words fail them . . . [A] compassionate book”
“Extremely affecting . . . Shawcross writes eloquently . . . Caring, inquisitive”
“History and investigative journalism fuse in a book that speaks beautifully about the effect of simply refusing to speak . . . It’s bracing to read a book that speaks so beautifully of the power of silence for both unhinging and healing. Ditto sex. Ditto love”
“Elegant . . . Shawcross can certainly write”
“There is a lot of fascinating material here, from meeting an artist who turned speechlessness into a six-month project . . . to the story of George Oppen, the objectivist poet who ceased writing amid the McCarthyist churn of postwar America”
“The book [is] a great pleasure to read, choosing to take the reader . . . towards an examination of the power, both positive and perilous, of silence”
“Shawcross has set herself the challenge of exploring these wordless moments in order to examine how silence moulds our personalities and shapes our lives . . . A compelling idea . . . well-told and engaging”
“The things we find “unspeakable” are the subject of Harriet Shawcross’s fascinating book”
“What a fascinating subject to have been chosen by a journalist . . . The book as it stands is a pleasure to read, choosing to take the reader towards an examination of the power, both positive and perilous, of silence”
“Shawcross looks at the ways in which breaking a silence can be healing . . . Unspeakable is engaging and informative . . . Thought-provoking”
“Explores what makes us silent, from the aftermath of natural disaster to the taboo of coming out. A heady mix of memoir, history, literary criticism and journalism”
Discussing 'The Unsaid' at BBC Radio Three's Free Thinking Festival
A graphic novelist, a writer, a film-maker who stopped speaking, and a writer and trustee of the North East Dads and Lads project debate what you can and can't say in life and art.
The Scotsman - Unspeakable Review
This caring, inquisitive book has one final irony. It does not talk and I read it silently. - Stuart Kelly
Harriet Shawcross on BBC Radio Four's Start the Week
Tom Sutcliffe with the filmmaker Harriet Shawcross, US diplomat William J Burns, musician Kathryn Tickell and academic Thomas Dixon
Discussing Unspeakable with Clare McKenna on NewsTalk Radio
Clare chats to Gemma Atkinson, Harriet Shawcross who investigates the power of Silence in her book 'Unspeakable', and as it's Mother's Day we look meet Fiona Hanrahan, Director of Midwifery & Nursing at the Rotunda Hospital.
Discussing Unspeakable and selective mutism with Jo Good on BBC Radio London
Levi Roots, Michael Ball and Harriet Shawcross with Jo Good
Kirkus Review of Unspeakable
“A curious, intensive exploration of the eccentric world of silence and solitude.”
The Guardian - 'Shame seeded my silence'
One Sunday I came to sit with the dead. The room was almost untouched. Everything and nothing was the same. I was standing in my grandmother’s study. She had lived with us for 25 years, and died six months earlier. Her room had been cleaned and closed – the dark beetles of dried blood scrubbed from the fireplace where she fell and cracked her head. I had come to her room to sit with the silence.