The Quiet and the Loud

A powerful, lyrical novel about friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma, love and our hopeless, hopeful world from the award-winning author of How It Feels to Float.

George’s life is loud. On the water, though, with everything hushed above and below, George is steady, silent. Then her estranged dad says he needs to talk and George’s past begins to wake, looping around her ankles, trying to drag her under.

But there’s no time to sink. George’s best friend, Tess, is about to become a teen mum, her friend Laz is in deep climate grief, her gramps keeps losing all his things, and her mums fill the house with fuss and chatter. Before long, heat and smoke join the noise as distant wildfires begin to burn.

Everything is loud, blazing, messy. Could Calliope, the girl who has just cartwheeled into George’s world and shot it through with dazzling colour, be her calm amidst the chaos?