The Silence Factory

Collins’s (The Betrayals) latest explores constricting rules of gender and class hierarchy twining around a diarist in the 1820s and a poet manqué-cum-audiologist in the 1890s. The two are connected by the threads of a miraculous spider silk that can shield sound, which has been enveloped by Britain’s monstrously greedy industrial machine. Collins also narrates the diary of Sophia Ashmore-Percy, an Englishwoman displaced to a remote Grecian island in service to her husband’s research; her initial formality breaks into heartfelt emotion as Sophia grows closer to the island’s culture of spider worship and one priestess in particular. Paralleling Sophia’s self-discovery 70 years later, Henry Latimer is called to the estate of Sophia’s descendant Edward Ashmore-Percy, where he is given the impossible task of curing Edward’s daughter’s congenital deafness. Narrator Ned Porteous flawlessly portrays Henry, channeling his gentle sensibilities, recent grief, and raw enthusiasm for the silk’s noise-excluding effect—all of which are underwritten by his growing attraction to Edward. Porteous holds listeners in a web of suspense as Henry uncovers truths about his patron and the factory while remaining tragically devoted.