Whispers through a Megaphone

Rachel Elliott

Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)

Miriam hasn't left her house in three years, and cannot raise her voice above a whisper. She still lives in the shadow of her dead mother... But today she has had enough, and is finally ready to rejoin the outside world.

Meanwhile, Ralph has made the mistake of opening a closet door, only to discover that his wife Sadie doesn't love him... And so he decides to leave his home.

Miriam and Ralph's chance meeting in a wood during stormy weather marks the beginning of an amusing, restorative friendship, while Sadie takes a break from Twitter to embark on an intriguing adventure of her own. As their collective story unfolds, each of them seeks to better understand the objects of their affection, and their own hearts, timidly refusing to stand still and accept the chaos life throws at them.

Rachel Elliott's loveable characters confront the hardest things in life with delicious humour and steady courage. Because sometimes, our over-connected world can seem too much for just one person...

Filled with wit and sparkling prose, Whispers Through a Megaphone explores our attempts to meaningfully connect with ourselves and others, in an often deafening world - when sometimes all we need is a bit of silence.

''Charming and moving, insightful and generous, and a pleasure to read.'

'Humour always tempers Elliott's handling of emotion as she points to eccentricities manifest in us all.'

Review by Ben Macnair (311016) Rating (7/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 7/10
Whispers through a Megaphone is one of those charming, if improbable stories about two people floundering in their own existence, and finding each other at the right time. Miriam is a thirty five year old woman, who has not left the house in the three years since her strict, and over-bearing mother died. Ralph, is a timid psychotherapist, with a fracturing marriage. His sons, the neighbours, and the thousands of his wife’s Twitter feed no more about the state of his marriage then he does.

We live in a world where we are increasingly attached to more people than ever before, but real connections, between people are harder to create, and a full time job to maintain. So instead of being reliant on the help of two of her friends, and her lovelorn neighbour, Miriam learns to make connections to the outside world, whilst Ralph learns to connect with his sons, and to learn to adapt to his gay son’s way of life. Miriam makes contact with the father she always thought was dead, by way of her two half-brothers.

In many ways, this is a book about mid-life crisis, but one that is enforced. Both Miriam and Ralph have to make sense of the changes that other people are putting on their lives, and if things don’t change, they will only stagnate.

Whispers Through a Megaphone a carefully drawn character study, that flirts with humour, pathos, the pain of lost opportunities, and over protective family, but through it all, we feel for Miriam, and her close coterie of friends, that feed her a fractured view of the world, but one which she won’t see properly, until she goes out into the world, to experience it for himself.
Ben Macnair (31st October 2016)