Book Review: Silent Sisters by Jo-Anne Lee

Silent Sisters by Joanne Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Joanne Lee digging an eighteen-inch deep hole, with her bare hands, in the family grave in order to bury the body of a baby girl which she and her sister Cath had discovered stuffed into a red bin in her mother’s wardrobe. Bernadette, having concealed her pregnancy, claimed that the child had been stillborn and that she hadn’t known what to do. Joanne felt torn: having recently buried her own baby son she knew that her dead sister had a right to a proper funeral, yet she knew her mother would get into trouble for concealing the death and wanted to protect her. So, even though she knew it was wrong, she reluctantly suggested this illegal interment in the family grave. It wouldn’t be until 2008 that she would discover that Bernadette had also kept the remains of three more dead babies, born between 1986 and 1997: one was discovered in the same red bin and the other two in a canvas holdall. What the family had seen as the effects of Bernadette’s yo-yo dieting over the years had, in fact, been concealed pregnancies. With her mother initially denying all knowledge of the bodies, Joanne was arrested on suspicion of murder but, once the facts emerged, her mother eventually stood trial. However, because forensic examinations were unable to determine whether any of the babies had been born alive, she was charged only with the concealment of their births and deaths.
The background to these horrors is exposed through Joanne Lee’s account of her childhood experiences growing up in almost unimaginable squalor in a dysfunctional, filthy, chaotic home, seeing and experiencing things no young child should ever be exposed to. When the police searched the house in 2008, they discovered animal faeces scattered around the place, swarms of maggots, bin bags piled up from the floor to the ceiling, and even stinking, years-old nappies matted into the carpet. To describe her mother as inadequate is a huge understatement. Although she wasn’t physically abusive, she showed absolutely no interest in her daughter, leaving her to fend for herself from a very young age.
A sad story but so good that you wont want to stop reading.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review


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