The Silence Factory

""Thanks to its clever speculative twist, this stands out from the pack of Victorian historicals."" -- Publishers Weekly ""I loved it. A delicately woven novel with an utterly original premise, it ensnared me from the very first page."" -- Emilia Hart, bestselling author of Weyward ""I loved Bridget Collins' last two novels so much I was almost nervous to read this one in case it didn't live up to my feverish expectations. I was wrong: in The Silence Factory she has created another world that exists on the edge of time and magic. Epic in scope and rich at sentence level, this is storytelling at its most immersive"" -- Erin Kelly, author of Skeleton Key ""Extraordinary writing... silk, secrets and silence woven into a gleaming Gothic web. What a treat"" -- Anna Mazzola, author of The Unseeing ""Of course, books don't need to be turned into magical artifacts. They already are. The magic of Bridget Collins's novel The Binding... is only a step away from that reality. Collins's vivid descriptions of the abuse of that magic within a grimy faux-Victorian-era world of workhouses and exploitation are almost too painfully true.... The Binding succeeds in creating the magic it proposes: the experience of memory returning, a rush of recollection that can change the whole world, if only for one person at a time--or sometimes two."" -- Naomi Novik, New York Times Book Review ""The Binding is a dark chocolate slice of cake with a surprising, satisfying seam of raspberry running through it. It is a rich, gothic entertainment that explores what books have trapped inside them and reminds us of the power of storytelling. Spellbinding."" -- Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring ""The Binding held me captive from the start and refused to set me free. It's a beautifully crafted tale of dark magic and forbidden passion, where unspeakable cruelty is ultimately defeated by enduring love. Breathtaking!"" -- Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things ""Pure magic. The kind of immersive storytelling that makes you forget your own name. I wish I had written it."" -- Erin Kelly, author of He Said/She Said, on The Binding ""Dizzyingly wonderful . . . Collins summons a Gormenghast-esque richness of place and people . . . a perfectly constructed work of fiction, with audacious twists that clumsier hands would fumble, and irresistibly moving emotional beats. . . . Nabokov called fiction a 'game of worlds, ' and Collins plays her own game here with perfect skill."" -- The Times (UK) on The Betrayals