The Silence Factory is an incredibly interesting concept. We are following two different stories that are intertwined. One is the journal entries of a woman living with her researcher husband on an island in Greece. He is seeking to learn more about a special species of spider with a silk that seems to effect sound. The other story, told in 3rd person, follows a young widower who is working in his father-in-laws shop selling hearing aids. He gets the opportunity to go on a journey to a town called Telverton where he is hoping to help a wealthly businessman's child gain the ability to hear.

These stories are connected though many years apart drawing you back and forth building a full story of the spiders, their silk, and the power and possible curses held within that silk.

I was intrigued to continue the story and unravel the mystery of the silk and its impact on the world. That being said, I found it at times hard to bring myself to read with the story being a bit slow and very dark. I severely disliked our lead character, Henry, though I imagine that was by design.

This story is told in dual timelines in 1820 when Sophia Ashmore-Percy accompanies her husband James to a remote island in Greece where he relentlessly searches for an elusive spider that he is betting his family’s future upon and decades later follows Henry Latimer, a widowed audiologist who is engaged by Sir Edward, the great-nephew of James, to find an auditory solution for his deaf daughter.

Henry is quite intrigued by a sample of silk that Sir Edward gifts him. The silk, which is made by the spiders brought back to England by James to start the Telverton Silk factory, has interesting audible properties. On one side it provides perfect silence to the listener, and the grieving Henry experiences the first good sleep since the death of his wife. However, the other side of the silk gives quite a different, contraindicative experience.

Upon Henry’s arrival to Carthmute House, it’s quicky evident that things are not quite as Sir Edward represented. Sir Edward is quite enigmatic, warm and affectionate one moment and coldly demanding the next, but Henry has fallen under his spell, seeking to please him with ideas for promoting his silk when his audio technology fails to help Sir Edward’s daughter.

There were times when I was quite frustrated with both the main characters in this story. Henry for his blind loyalty to Sir Edward despite the red flags popping up all over the place and with Sophia for putting up with the mansplaining James (yes, it’s a modern term but perfect for him), though I suppose a woman with any kind of intellect was expected to put up with men talking down to them in 1820. They both acted just as I was at the tip of exasperation. Perfect timing.

Henry is given the journal of Sophia and must work out what happened with her, James and the spiders all the while investigating the intriguing happenings at the house and factory. All is not as it seems, in either storyline. It all culminates with a disastrous event that propels the story quickly to its conclusion leaving me both satisfied and still slightly baffled, but happy that I enjoyed this ride.

This is my third book by this author. I loved The Binding and was disappointed by The Betrayals. This book falls neatly between with a gothic atmosphere that I loved, intrigue that drew me in, and creepy, mythological spiders with mesmerizing abilities that I still don’t fully understand, but it may prompt me to pick it up and read it all over again.

Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for a copy provided for an honest review.

"From the acclaimed author of the #1 international bestseller The Binding - a captivating story of Gothic suspense about a powerful family, the magical and dangerous silk their fortune is built upon, and the exploitative history they are desperately trying to hide.

1820: Sophia Ashmore-Percy reluctantly accompanies her husband James to a remote Greek island, where he searches for rare biological specimens. Once there, however, she sets on her own voyage of discovery - stumbling across the very creature he is looking for, making an unexpected connection with a local woman, and ultimately reconsidering her marriage, life, and own desires.

Decades later, audiologist Henry Latimer is sent to the home of industrialist Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy and tasked with curing the man's young daughter, Philomel, of her deafness. But Henry, eager to escape a troubled past, quickly becomes obsessed with the fascinating nature of Sir Edward's business: spinning silk with a rare and magical breed of spiders. The extraordinary silk shields sound, offering respite from bustling streets and noisy neighbors. The result is instant tranquility, as wearers experience a soothing calmness. Yet, those within earshot of the outward-facing silk are subjected to eerie murmurs that amplify with proximity. Bystanders suffer the consequences of this unnerving phenomenon, manifesting in physical and mental afflictions ranging from headaches and drowsiness to severe cases of madness.

As Henry becomes entangled in the allure of the silk and Sir Edward's charm, he glimpses a more sinister family history. The closer he ventures into the inner circle of Carthmute House, the more he unravels the horrifying underbelly of the silk business.

With Bridget Collins's signature, stunning prose, The Silence Factory is an equally enthralling and unsettling Gothic story about complicity, desire, and corruption - a novel to lose yourself in."

Oh my, silk capable of inducing insanity? How soon can I visit the looms?

I never quite connected with the storytelling or the writing style in this one, despite the plot sounding really interesting. It wasn't a good fit for me, but I think others will have a better time with it.

The magical element, while a unique concept, didn't lead to anything particularly interesting for me.

Another sweeping, beautiful gothic fantasy where you weirdly want to be part of the world, but are also a little afraid of it. With a lovely undercurrent focused on what happens when natural resources are overused.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this arc which will release wide on 8/20/24

I…. The writing was beautiful. It truly was but this gothic suspense set in 1920s Greece was not fun for me to read. It was clunky and unmoving. I felt like I was punishing myself to finish it. I do believe there is an audience for this prose-y work but it was not me.

Thanks for the opportunity to review. Interesting premise around the price we're willing to pay for some things -- ultimately I didn't click with this so ended up setting aside/DNF.

Bridget Collins has fallen off my list of authors to watch for several reasons (TERF allegations among other things) but also because The Silence Factory is confirmation that every book of hers since The Binding has been a miss! Her latest novel, a gothic horror suspense, is thankfully more comprehensible than the unholy mess that was The Betrayals but follows in its tradition of trying to cram 50 themes into one book without fully committing to any of them.

The story follows two characters: the unhappy wife of an 1820s Victorian naturalist trapped on a remote Greek island, and a grieving aurist (early precursor to audiologist? idk) who ~80 years later gets wrapped into a nefarious silk industry by her descendant. Both characters had enormous horrible wet blanket energy and spent basically the whole of their stories being massively depressed due to Repressed Homosexuality whilst making horribly decisions on account of their baseless feelings for the objectively atrocious men in their lives. Super fun to read, obviously! The tiny glimmer of light of the story was the budding relationship between Sophia (unhappy Victorian housewife) and her housekeeper Hera (exoticised local) but even this was undercut by the colonial undertones and the VERY OBVIOUS fact that this part of the story is set in Greece and not somewhere else solely so Collins can dodge racism allegations by exotisicng Spicy White People instead of people of color. There is SOME attempt to reckon with the reprehensible actions of Sophie & her husband in stealing indigenous ritual as a method of financial and social advancement but unfortunately I ALSO just finished Sofia Samataar's The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, so this jab at a political commentary fell especially flat.

Onto Henry, and the other 35 themes! Henry as a character is 1000x worse than Sophia and caused me psychic damage with his nonstop blind ignorance and utter lack of class consciousness. He is a character defined utterly by his poor decisions, and while their is certainly something classically Gothic about watching a character completely torpedo his lives and the lives of those around him it was utterly unfun and uninteresting to read. I realize all of my discussion thus far has utterly ignored the central plot, which is essentially Special Spider Silk That Gives You Psychosis: Good or Bad? Collins is clearly trying to make a point about late stage capitalism and the commodification of basic human needs but knuckling down on silence as this particular human need was comically hard to sell and made the stakes feel week. I won't even begin to get into use of deaf folks as a plot device as I don't know much about those experience but am interested to see if any folks in that community have thoughts.
I didn't know about the TERF business until reading some of these reviews but does explain some of the weird bioessentialist ~female body mysticism~ vibes throughout the book....bad vibes all around!!!

The writing is beautiful and the characters are complex, however, I kept waiting for something to happen that would justify all of the time I spent reading. It is very slow and the pacing is uneven because each time when I got to a section that felt like it should be a ramp up I was left sorely disappointed.

This next comment did not influence my rating/review: It was brought to my attention that the author engages in problematic discourse online under their professional accounts. If I hadn’t discovered this before I posted about this book I would’ve opened myself up to backlash, and it would just be nice if these authors and their publishers could for once consider the much wider implications of their decisions.

From the acclaimed author of the #1 international bestseller The Binding—a captivating story of gothic suspense about a powerful family, the magical and dangerous silk their fortune is built upon, and the exploitative history they are desperately trying to hide.

I hated it. Mostly because the author is a known TERF but also because she's not a good writer.

The Silence Factory is a gothic tale, with elements of thriller and horror genres. It is told along two timelines – (1) the 1820 diary entries of Sophia Ashmore-Percy wherein she describes her biologist husband’s search for a rare spider specimen on a remote Greek isle; and (2) decades later, within the same family, a business built by Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy based on producing silk from the same rare spider. The second timeline is told from the point of view of audiologist Henry Latimer as he attempts to help Sir Edward’s deaf daughter to hear and gets caught up in the family’s risky silk-producing enterprise. It is an intriguing story. The silk contains unreal qualities – one side in particular offers near silence to those within its boundaries and has nearly unlimited potential applications. But the second side produces eerie, echo-like sounds that drive those around to madness and/or deafness. As Henry becomes closer to the silk, including being charged with its promotion, he finds himself with unhealthy attractions to the business and Sir Edward.

While intriguing, the Silence Factory never quite reached the potential of its cover, which drew me in immediately. With the exceptions of Philomel (Sir Edward’s daughter) and her governess, the characters were largely unlikeable and one-note. The protagonist, Henry, is gullible, falling for the silk business and its businessman despite clear warnings against them. His attraction to Sir Edward, in particular, is baseless and reads as very unbelievable. So, while this book IS well-written and has an interesting premise, it doesn’t quite hold up to its promise. Others have loved it, however, and mine is just one opinion…

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow Books for providing me with this e-ARC in advance of it publishment.

Henry Latimer is an aurist unhappily working with his father-in-law and grappling with grief when he meets a peculiar gentleman with a scrap of odd silk and a proposition. Henry takes him up on the offer and finds himself with renewed purpose at the front of a new business venture working with the man he’s slowly becoming obsessed with. But of course things aren’t what they seem at the factory and with Sir Ashmore-Percy himself. What ensues is a story of delusion versus reality, capitalism versus indigenous culture, and the toxic effects of patriarchy on society.

I don’t know if I’d call this fantasy or horror like it was advertised. Maybe historical speculative fiction, but it is a great, gothic read with some strong themes. Henry as a main character is written to be passive while still being engaging, sometimes making frustrating decisions but always being led by his past and clearly defined morals. He’s an interestingly spineless protagonist towards the beginning and his arc to finding himself through his grief is particularly compelling, but the twist towards the end is a little weaker than I expected. The story-within-a-story element is a great choice to lend a female perspective to the story, and I think Sophy’s chapters were my favorite parts of the book. There were some slight pacing issues towards the middle but once I pushed through I don’t think it was that detrimental to my reading experience.

Huge thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and author for this Advanced Reader Copy! This review is my honest opinion and offered voluntarily!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for a honest review. This book was atmospheric and I was fully immersed in the bleakness of the town in which the factory was manufacturing its special silk. However, there was something missing from the execution of the story itself, with many of the storylines feeling unfinished. The descriptions of the spiders were a bit unnerving. The writing was exemplary but the overall story lacked substance.

Thanks to NetGalley, Bridget Collins, and William Morrow for allowing me to read The Silence Factory in the return of an honest review. I received an advanced reader copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I can see how a lot of people will enjoy this book. It has a gothic, historical, fantasy, mystery, horror feel to it. It just failed to keep me engrossed in the story. Not sure why.

If you are looking for a gothic horror book to read, look no further. Bridget Collins has created another masterpiece. She has woven together the two stories of Sophia Ashmore, the lady of the house whose husband is on a quest to find the elusive spiders who will become his family’s fortune, and Henry Latimer, who decades later becomes involved with the Latimer family and their silk business. It is through these two perspectives that we learn the horror that can be wrought from taking something you cannot control.

This is the type of story that you would like to savor, but Bridget Collins’ style of writing briskly takes you along and pretty soon you have read the whole book in one sitting. You want to look away but you can’t, it has caught you in its web.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the digital ARC of this book.

The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins is gothic historical fiction that comes to a conclusion that leaves you feeling a prickle of unease as to how real everything felt while reading, especially in the last few pages.

Henry works to help people hear. Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy has a daughter who can neither hear nor speak. The two men find each other, and Henry manages to find himself invited to the Ashmore-Percy house to help the daughter, Philomel. Ashmore-Percy also owns a factory that produces a curious silk from rare spiders that can affect how one perceives sound. But there is more to the spider silk, Ashmore-Percy, and the town that Henry discovers as he tries to ingratiate himself in the household as a way to escape his own demons.

The story is interspersed with diary entries from Sophia Ashmore, whose husband is the one who first brought back the spiders. Sophia’s story is one of discovery and survival, one where an island community harnesses the delicate nature of spider silk to help them through the stages of life. The very same spider silk that ends up ensnaring Henry in Sir Ashmore-Percy’s schemes a generation later. With aspects of forbidden desire, hidden conspiracies, unsaid motives, and a town caught in the web of something that they do not understand, this story kept me riveted from the first page to the last. It is not a happy story, but it is one of self-realization and survival. And maybe one with a little bit of hope tangled up in a silken web of hidden truths and sticky lies.

A silent gothic historical mystery.

The Silence Factory tells two stories, Sophia's and Henrey's. Two lives are interwoven by a mythical spider with the ability to create silence via their silk. But this silk comes with a cost. It may create perfect silence for one, but it creates uncanny sounds for anyone nearby. While this story is filled with lyrical prose and many quintessential gothic elements, this particular story didn't fully work for me. While I am a fan of a slow-paced gothic novel, this one felt abnormally slow, and towards the end of the story I began to lose interest in the plot. While I enjoyed the descriptive writing overall, it did dramatically slow down the pacing/plot of the story, and not always in a good way. While it may not be one of my favorite gothic novels, I think that fans of the gothic genre, in general, will appreciate this story, but I would not recommend it to those who do not regularly seek out gothic stories. Thank you to Netgalley and William Marrow for providing me with an early copy in exchange for my honest review.

This one promised gothic suspense but I did not get that here. Part of it was that the prologue was so long that I kept thinking wait am I in chapter one? There was just so much thrown at the reader there that it didn't really feel like a prologue. Maybe if it had been like "_ years ago" and more of a chapter one. I think overall the writing style just wasn't for me. Those who like the writing style will probably enjoy this one more.

I love Bridget Collins. I am obsessed with her adult books previously published. I love this book so much that I have purchased two different additions and will be looking for more. Her writing is stunning! I can always count on Bridger Collins to enhance me and her stories and creating an atmosphere that I get lost in. And to have a story about just that I swear she’s in my brain. This is what I needed. This is what I love the pacing was amazing. The story was amazing, the writing was beautifully done. I love this book!