The Silent Brother - Simon Van Der Velde

 

Synopsis

When his beloved little brother is stolen away, five-year-old Tommy Farrier is left alone with his alcoholic mam, his violent step-dad and his guilt. Too young to understand what has really happened, Tommy is sure of only one thing. He is to blame.

Tommy tries to be good, to live-up to his brother’s increasingly hazy memory, but trapped in a world of shame and degradation he grows up with just two options; poverty or crime. And crime pays. 

Or so he thinks. 

A teenage drug-dealer for the vicious Burns gang, Tommy’s life is headed for disaster, until, in the place he least expects, Tommy sees a familiar face… 

And then things get a whole lot worse.

Buy The Silent Brother at: 

Northodox Press 

Amazon  

Goodreads 

Review

Simon has woven a rich tapestry with gritty yet eloquent writing.

I found Tommy to be a likable character that I was rooting for throughout the book. He suffers some serious physical knocks which didn't make for comfortable reading, but then that is the style of the writing. One thing about Tommy is that when he gets knocked down he gets right back up again, even if I wished he would stay low.

We follow Tommy in his native North East reeling from the loss of his little brother. He blames himself for not protecting him from that final external grasp. Even as a young kid Tommy has the measure of his step dad and how to try to avoid the inevitable violence from him, but not so much from the bureaucracy of the outside world. 

Tommy has a brief respite from his harsh home life in the form of a girl he encounters whilst she is shoplifting. The portrayal of their friendship was so beautiful. Unfortunately this is cut short and ultimately brings him more trouble in later years.

As Tommy gets older and embarks on his life of crime things begin to look up for him.  With no one else to turn to he starts to find his own way in the world, albeit an illegal one. He encounters some very seedy characters who make his step Dad look like Homer Simpson. All the characters were very realistically written and I mainly wanted to never meet them or do them harm in some way.

There are scenes that chilled me and yet at times there is a gentle humour too and made me laugh out loud. A few times I thought I'd missed a page as the action moved on with my questions unanswered. They were answered in time with revelations that were so poignant they deserved to be dealt with this way. 

If you think you've read novels like this before, then just wait until you get to the end because there are a few twists that truly amazed me. I think this would make a brilliant film.

I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars. My thanks to Simon for inviting me to review his book.

The Inspiration behind The Silent Brother 

Victims or Perpetrators? 

Working in the east end of Newcastle could be pretty dispiriting. Hard as we tried to make things better, there was always someone, plenty of someones, ready to tear it down. Drug and alcohol abuse was everywhere – as was anger and frustration, vented in seemingly pointless, and often vicious violence. Put in a new central heating system, they’d rip it out to sell the copper pipe. Give them double-glazing, they’d put a brick through it. During the riots of 1999, local people set fire to their neighbours’ homes. In the end, it was hard to avoid feeling that these people deserved what they got. They didn’t. There was a time, in living memory for some, when fully half the world’s shipping was built on the Tyne, and people would joke about the obvious foolishness of bringing coals to Newcastle. Not anymore. These days, when a major employer closes down special teams are brought into the area to help with retraining and attract new employers. But in Thatcher’s Britain, when the unions, heavy industry and even the north itself was the enemy – closing down the mines and the decline of the shipyards was an end in itself. A victory. Something like the victory in Iraq, with no plan beyond winning the ‘war’.

The effect on these communities was devastating. Generations of skilled workers lost their jobs. More than that, they lost their identity and their union, and often their families. How could they teach their children the meaning of a hard day’s work for a fair day’s pay? - in this new world of every man for himself. And why would their children listen to these old mens’ stories? - when both father and children were signing on at the same dole office. Abandoned and useless, these once proud men faded away. Worse still, their children grew up without hope or direction. The old order was gone, and there was nothing to replace it and nothing to do, except anaesthetize yourself from day to day, until the hopelessness got too much - and erupted into violence. Ambition meant getting a few quid together, enough to score a deal to get you through the emptiness, until next week’s giro. Dignity and community were replaced by crime and booze and drugs. We’re on the third generation now. For them, the glory days are something the history teacher drones on about. It has nothing to do with their lives. In a community with so little hope, overstretched social services and policing priorities elsewhere, it’s easy for the gangsters to take over – and anyway, no one likes a grass. Some, heroically, stay and fight for their community. But the truth is that most of the time, those who can, get out. This is the world our hero, Tommy grows up in. So if The Silent Brother is dark in places, it’s because my aim is to tell it how it is. To highlight the link between victim and perpetrator, and show you that often, they are one and the same. In writing this book, I asked myself – if I had grown up in this world, what, if I was brave enough, might I have done to survive? The Silent Brother is my answer.

About The Author 

Simon Van der Velde was born and educated in Newcastle upon Tyne where he trained and practiced as a lawyer. Writing, however, was always the real passion, and Simon has now left the legal profession in order to concentrate on his writing. Since completing a creative writing M.A. (with distinction) at University of Northumbria in 2011, Simon’s work has won and been short -listed for numerous awards including; The Yeovil Literary Prize, (twice), The Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal, The Wasafiri New Writing Prize, The Luke Bitmead Bursary, The Frome Short Story Prize, The Writers’ and Artists’ Short Story Prize, The Harry Bowling Prize, The Henshaw Press Short Story Competition and The National Association of Writers’ Groups Open Competition. Simon is the founder and chair of Gosforth Writers Group and author of the widely acclaimed, Amazon bestseller, Backstories, ‘the stand -out most original book of the year’ in 2021. His literary crime novel, The Silent Brother is published on 16th June, 2022 by Northodox Press. Simon is currently working on both Backstories II and his follow -up crime novel, Dogwood. Having travelled throughout Europe and South America, Simon now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with his wife, labradoodle and two tyrannical children.