Anja Sicking

The Silent Sin

The Silent Sin of the title is, in Oscar Wilde’s time, ‘the love that dare not speak its name’, ie homosexuality (I'm not spoiling the ending as it is very clear early on).

Two young, lower middle-class girls fall down the social ladder when their parents are killed in a fire taking the families wealth with it. They become maids for a distant relative, and when this family also find their financial position slipping they let the sisters go. Anna finds herself in Amsterdam and gets a job working for an artisan merchant, a music printer and musical instrument seller. Over time she begins to sense a connection between them and believes he sees through her position as maid to the young woman of a better family that she is. However, things soon begin to evolve that show her all is not as her fantasies would have it.

There are some wonderfully observed domestic details in the first third of the novel, which put me in mind of Dutch Stilleven (still life paintings). However, I felt that the writer didn’t make enough of the literacy of the maid who in reality had come from a higher station, I felt that although she might not have been especially ‘knowing’ about the society she found herself in, neither would she necessarily be quite as naïve, at least in her own self deception.

For me the novel was also flawed by its singular perspective. That said, for a debut novel, it was well crafted showed promise for the future.… (more)

Set in mid-18th Century Amsterdam, this novel has a limited domestic setting and is narrated by a young girl of good upbringing who has fallen on hard times and now works as a house servant for a printer of music. The young protagonist and domestic setting is reminiscent of [Girl with a Pearl Earring] (based on my distant memories of that book) and offered some wonderful domestic details. Essentially a mystery, the story parcels out small references to 'the silent sin' and increasing 'clues' as the young woman works it out for herself. While a mildly entertaining story, I thought it somewhat disappointing. There are various elements to the story (a sister, for example), that broaden the reader's expectations but go nowhere. OK, I get the point that people used to be executed for this 'sin' but I failed to be truly moved by it, and I cannot help but think that the book could've been so much more. (January 2008).… (more)