Yvonne Jerrold
cuscata@ntlworld.com
http://www.yvonnejerrold.com | About My Writing SILENT PEOPLE: Hearing the Call of the Dodder
is about one young woman's struggle to reconcile opposing views of the world.
Published 2006.
Read Reviews & Read a Chapter on my website.
"A haunting tale that echoes in the mind long after the book has been put down."
Judie Newman, Fellow of the English Association
"A fascinating world... this book leaves the reader pondering many possibilities that lie beneath the conscious mind..."
Shirley Roe, Allbooks Review
| Authors' Register: | About My Background My novels tend to concentrate on the inner lives of their characters, exploring the dilemmas of people who feel they are trying to live in two different worlds at once. I also paint from time to time and several of my paintings are about my struggles with writing.
I was born in Washington D.C. of an Irish mother and a French/British father who died when I was five, after which my family moved to Dublin. The unpredictable river in my novel, Silent People, was inspired by the Dodder river which flows down the Wicklow mountains and through the city of Dublin where I grew up. (However the dodder in the title refers, not to the river, but to the rootless dodder plant). I attended the National College of Art in Dublin before moving to London. Later I studied architecture at Clare College, Cambridge and worked as an architect and garden designer before taking up writing.
I love trees and my first two novels have plants and wild nature as dominant themes. I am also creating a small woodland of native trees in a previously bare field, in Cambridgeshire where I live. You can see its progress on my website. |
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My Books |
Silent People: Hearing the Call of the Dodder | | | Genre: Literary
Buy the Book
 | | is a novel that challenges conventional assumptions about the world. It is about keeping secrets, and seeing things that others cannot see, and about the gulf that exists between people who see the same facts in very different ways.
It is about the silent people who inhabit this gulf, this no-man's-land, this space between worlds.
Hebe is haunted by memories of a wild dodder boy who befriended her when she was a child and taught her to see nature with new eyes. He came from an ancient race that lives camouflaged among us. She lost touch with him after a disastrous flood and now, returning to her childhood haunts, she finds his hidden world is under threat.
Published by Troubador Publishers Ltd and available from all good bookshops & Amazon & numerous other websites. For Special Offer to Reading Groups see my website (above).
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| A Silent Woman: Being mad myself... | | | Genre: Psychological&Poetry
| | A portrait of madness, but only if looked at from a ‘sane’ point of view. It follows the inner life of a silent woman who is tormented by voices that say she is mad or has lost her memory. She knows she is not mad, only secretive, and with good reason as she has some precious secrets to protect. She feels like an imposter trapped between two worlds and is desperate to escape the alien family she finds herself locked into.
| | | Read an Extract |
| A CASE OF WILD JUSTICE? | | | Genre: Crime & Self-defence
 | | A Case of Wild Justice?
is a story of crime and self-defence. It is about standing up to bullies and refusing to be intimidated even if that means taking drastic action.
Hannah Meadows, a kindly old lady with a fondness for hats, is angry with her clever and manipulative grandson, Billy, whose gang attacked her sister's garden. Seeing how Billy's behaviour is destroying his family - his sisters fear him and his father has lost patience with him, while his mother believes he is an innocent victim - Hannah knows she must do something.
She is tempted to join the 'silver bees' - a group of elderly people who are fighting back against crime and vandalism by turning themselves into booby traps. "If we can't save ourselves from attack," they say, "then at least the criminals won't escape either"! (They call themselves 'silver bees' because a bee stings only in extremis and then it dies).
Hannah hates violence and wrestles with her conscience. She fears for the safety of her granddaughters and her elderly neighbours, many of whom are too nervous to go out. She also feels responsible for Billy because of her own guilty secret.
As her past comes back to haunt her, Hannah finds herself torn between her anger and her hatred of violence; between her love of life and her desire to stop the bullies. How can she protect her family if she is not prepared to act?
Then there is Hannah's young neighbour, Declan, who sees her comings and goings from his attic window and who is desperately in love with Billy's sister...
| | | Read an Extract |
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Awards, Prizes and Commendations |
 | | A MOMENT OF SILENCE won second prize in the Cambridge Writers' Short Story Competition 2005. You can read it on their website: www.cambridgewriters.org or on my own website: www.yvonnejerrold.com
another of my short stories, called FRIDAY, was commended in the Bridport Monologue One Voice Competition 1993. You can read it on my website: www.yvonnejerrold.com |
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