Stepping Out Of The Silence
by Mara Mansour
About the book
Elliot Van Doren has spent two years keeping the world at arm’s length. Since losing his parents, he has built a carefully controlled life around work, routine and solitude. His flat is quiet. His days are predictable. His emotions stay firmly behind a locked door. Then Val Newman moves in across the hall. Val is everything Elliot isn't: bright, sociable, impulsive and seemingly determined to turn every day into a celebration. Her parties, laughter and endless stream of friends drive him to distraction. But beneath the sequins and laughter is a woman quietly struggling with rejection, uncertainty and the growing fear that the life she dreamed of may never happen. They irritate each other. They challenge each other. And, slowly, they begin to see the person hiding beneath the surface. As Val starts questioning the life she's been living and Elliot is forced to confront the grief he's spent years avoiding, an unexpected friendship begins to change them both. But healing isn't simple, and neither of them can move forward without first facing the things they've spent so long running from. Sometimes the person who disrupts your carefully ordered life is the person who shows you how to live it.
What to expect
Purchasing takes you to the author's retailer (amzn.eu).
Available as an ebook and in paperback. Paperback ISBN 9781806455966.
About the author
I'm a mother of four and a teacher of English, which means I have spent most of my life in the company of stories — my children's, my students', and the ones people carry quietly without ever quite finding the words for them. It's the ones that resist words that interest me most. My writing explores the spaces between what we feel and what we say: the vulnerability of loving someone who might hurt you, the slow and uneven work of healing, the love that finds you in the places you least expected to be found. I don't write about the big dramatic moments so much as what happens in the silences around them — because that, in my experience, is where the real ones live.
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