What do you think?
Rate this book
The Silver Thread
'The day was dove grey, and silk. A melancholic cloth that whispered and rustled. Who could say what it foretold.' Dublin, 1840: Rhia Mahoney watches in despair as her father's linen warehouse goes up in flames. Her family is ruined. Her imagined future, full of pattern and colour, plum brocades and beetle-green taffeta, crumbles to ashes. Seeking work as a governess in dismal London, Rhia's life is changed beyond all imagination when her uncle, a shipping merchant, commits suicide. Rhia cannot - will not - believe he would take his own life, but before she can investigate, she is accused of a crime she didn't commit, and forced to board a prison ship bound for New South Wales. The voyage is one of dry biscuits and endless sea, made bearable by the women's daily chore: to sew scraps of cloth into an elaborate quilt. What Rhia does not realise is that with every stich, she binds herself closer to a journey of discovery that will not end in Australia ...Weaving death, love and adventure into a vivid tale of the world at the height of Empire, The Silver Thread is plotted like a murder mystery, but narrated with the skill and style of a literary storyteller.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2012
14 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Kylie Fitzpatrick
11 books6 followersKylie Fitzpatrick was born in Denmark and grew up in England, America, and Australia. She has worked as an actress, as a researcher for documentary films and as a freelance script editor. She lives in Somerset with her partner and young daughter.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 3, 2013
This book has it all, murder, mystery, intrigue, shocking injustice and romance.
Just like the quilt they were stitching piece by piece as they sailed across the seas on the convict ship Rajah, the fabric of this story was unfolding piece by hand stitched piece to build into an epic tale which pulls the reader right into the experience as it evolves into an unimaginable turn of events that radically changed the course of the many lives it involved....but especially the life of Rhia Mahoney.
As the story unfolded, I found myself at times filled with righteous indignation, then rage and frustration, then sympathy, then...the whole gamut.
The story was arresting insomuch as you would be anxious to find out an outcome to a particular turn of events just as another unexpected circumstance would present itself to create yet another obstacle to the first. And so it continued, just when you thought you had a handle on the way things were going, you would be flipped with another dilemma which was not envisaged.
The author did a fine job of juggling so many scenarios to build up to the ultimate conclusion.
If you like historical fiction, you will love this. Highly recommended 4.5*s
December 27, 2013
A great historical read. Took me a little while to get into this book but once i did, the murder, intrigue and injustice of Rhia's situation took me on a ride to Australia in a convict ship and back again!
October 15, 2017
The first 100 pages were tough going. Perhaps it was that the cover and blurb suggested it would be about a convict ship experience and what happened after, but it was really about what happened before the convict ship and about trade and the textiles industry. So that was really misleading.
The writing was very descriptive, often overly so, which made getting through the first 100 pages of background setting quite laborious. After that, things picked up as the action started to really happen and the mystery was laid out.
I would have liked to have seen the connection between Rhia and her namesake the Welsh goddess Rhiannon explored and exploited a bit more. Rhia could have taken better advantage of her links to the Otherworld, but perhaps the author felt that going down this path would be too fantastical for the book she was writing, so it has a very minor role to play.
It pained me to read repeated comments about Rhia feeling as though her outspokenness had made her unattractive to men, yet saying she didn't care. The repetition though, certainly contradicted that. Other reviews, and even the blurb, have commented on it being a love story, but it is not a romantic love story.
The plot is complex and filled with many allegories, that of Rhiannon, textiles and the photogenic drawings, but the mystery is satisfying. In the desire to cram in so many characters, activities, locations, politics and intrigue, there were a few holes left unfilled and some convenient liberties taken, but it didn't detract from The Silver Threat being hard to put down.
The writing was very descriptive, often overly so, which made getting through the first 100 pages of background setting quite laborious. After that, things picked up as the action started to really happen and the mystery was laid out.
I would have liked to have seen the connection between Rhia and her namesake the Welsh goddess Rhiannon explored and exploited a bit more. Rhia could have taken better advantage of her links to the Otherworld, but perhaps the author felt that going down this path would be too fantastical for the book she was writing, so it has a very minor role to play.
It pained me to read repeated comments about Rhia feeling as though her outspokenness had made her unattractive to men, yet saying she didn't care. The repetition though, certainly contradicted that. Other reviews, and even the blurb, have commented on it being a love story, but it is not a romantic love story.
The plot is complex and filled with many allegories, that of Rhiannon, textiles and the photogenic drawings, but the mystery is satisfying. In the desire to cram in so many characters, activities, locations, politics and intrigue, there were a few holes left unfilled and some convenient liberties taken, but it didn't detract from The Silver Threat being hard to put down.
October 7, 2019
I loved the narrative and style, but there were odd historical and geographical problems, like the Rajah heading to Australia via Sth America rather than around Africa and Cape Horn, and as the real Rajah quilt is mentioned the destination should have been Hobart, not Sydney.
I don't mind adding fictional characters to a true story, but getting these things wrong was like bung notes. The other problem was the description of Sydney, I felt like the author had never been to Australia; these are quibbles, but Rhia's descriptions of kangaroos making there way through the bush was wrong note and no mention of Australian songbirds (only parrots and kookaburras are mentioned) and the aroma of the bush were significant others.
The descriptions of cloth and fibre along with class and labour are wonderful, and the who-done-it aspect was relatively satisfying (though I did pick the guilty party before Rhia's arrest).
I listened to this as an audio-book and it was an excellent reading by Suzy Aitchison and as a library borrow, was a good entertainment.
I don't mind adding fictional characters to a true story, but getting these things wrong was like bung notes. The other problem was the description of Sydney, I felt like the author had never been to Australia; these are quibbles, but Rhia's descriptions of kangaroos making there way through the bush was wrong note and no mention of Australian songbirds (only parrots and kookaburras are mentioned) and the aroma of the bush were significant others.
The descriptions of cloth and fibre along with class and labour are wonderful, and the who-done-it aspect was relatively satisfying (though I did pick the guilty party before Rhia's arrest).
I listened to this as an audio-book and it was an excellent reading by Suzy Aitchison and as a library borrow, was a good entertainment.
October 27, 2019
3 and a half stars. A very slow start, in fact, nearly half the book went by before I started to get interested in it. There was too much emphasis on the cloth industry with too much detail, that wasn't why I chose this book to read, I chose it because of the convict storyline, which didn't happen until half the book had gone, and a murder mystery, which was only touched on lightly. Overall though, a pretty good read, would have been better without the constant references to the cloth industry and more on the murder mystery/convict side.
September 23, 2022
Kylie Fitzpatrick weaves a fascinating tale, in which hardship, disappointments, and injustice meet kindness, courage, hope and vindication.
June 6, 2022
A friend recommended this novel as a good mystery with the side issue of having a possible documentation of the making of the Rajah Quilt. Not much accuracy to the possible method of making the quilt, or even to the voyage of the Rajah apparently. But I was consumed with the story of Irish merchants coming across hard times and the opium and tea trade in Britain and the emergence of the convict colony in Australia.
It was a good historical mystery even though some of the seedier sides of 1840s life for general folk and for prisoners was somewhat glossed over.
It was a good historical mystery even though some of the seedier sides of 1840s life for general folk and for prisoners was somewhat glossed over.
October 22, 2015
I found this difficult to get into at first but I think it needs one round of the principal characters before it picks up. The style of writing is quite old fashioned even for a historical novel and coming from a spate of works like these with a first person pov and starts without delay, I had to get back into more 20th century classic style. The details are interesting and authentic but to begin with I had a feeling of the writing being 3rd hand as if someone was writing a story of a story if that makes sense and that at times made me feel distanced from it and not as emoted as I should be. This is still a very enjoyable read and I am only part way into it and now I have a sense of who is important in the story and how they're connected, it's becoming more real. There seems to be quite a difference in the storytelling between opening chapters in Ireland and Australia and when the core of the story moves to London. I wonder if the author started and honed her work on the Middle section which is extremely strong before going back to the introductory parts which are less engaging. If anyone finds it dragging as the backstory is established, don't give up as it really is worthwhile getting to the best parts of the story at around 25%. I am about 35% through. One small, niggling thing bothers me to do with language. Some odd words used are not traditional English and stand out as being US or Australian but used in the English or Irish character sections and occasionally are anachronistic too. It's the sort of thing an editor should query, perhaps there were justified reasons for leaving them in but they do stand out against all the diligently, detailed research that has been included.
It's a shame the literary agents have put so little effort into promoting this author online. The author's profile on Amazon and Good Reads is completely blank. Also, considering this novel has an enormous amount of historical fact carefully researched, it would have been useful to have had x-ray features turned on with the Kindle version. For example, each chapter is aptly named after a type of textile cloth but general.dictionaries or wikipedia links don't have a definition and I am intrigued to know more. As the author clearly researched this an x-ray feature could have included these as terms. And of course, it would help to have Word Wise as well as an audio book version. This book is free to borrow through the Amazon Prime LL or to get through Amazon KU, so using those to promote an audio version would have helped the author. A literary agent or publisher should realise how easily a new publication can become buried and should at least use the blurb on the author in the text, plus an image, to put on author's profiles online to help it stand out. I was given this book as a gift thank goodness because I would have passed it over if I saw no profile, no enhanced reading features and no audio book version available and gone for a book that has all those things. As a genre, historic fiction has 117,368 books on Amazon and a new release gets quickly buried. Readers are going to have to pick books that stand out and with only 28 reviews on this book since 2012, that's a reason to move on. The publisher as an indie needs to be investing in more than just press review copies to give away and find social networking groups with specific interest in books like this and give away free copies for reviews. Although I read a lot in this genre not once did this pop up on my radar until a friend who supports her local writer gave this to me for my birthday.
It's a shame the literary agents have put so little effort into promoting this author online. The author's profile on Amazon and Good Reads is completely blank. Also, considering this novel has an enormous amount of historical fact carefully researched, it would have been useful to have had x-ray features turned on with the Kindle version. For example, each chapter is aptly named after a type of textile cloth but general.dictionaries or wikipedia links don't have a definition and I am intrigued to know more. As the author clearly researched this an x-ray feature could have included these as terms. And of course, it would help to have Word Wise as well as an audio book version. This book is free to borrow through the Amazon Prime LL or to get through Amazon KU, so using those to promote an audio version would have helped the author. A literary agent or publisher should realise how easily a new publication can become buried and should at least use the blurb on the author in the text, plus an image, to put on author's profiles online to help it stand out. I was given this book as a gift thank goodness because I would have passed it over if I saw no profile, no enhanced reading features and no audio book version available and gone for a book that has all those things. As a genre, historic fiction has 117,368 books on Amazon and a new release gets quickly buried. Readers are going to have to pick books that stand out and with only 28 reviews on this book since 2012, that's a reason to move on. The publisher as an indie needs to be investing in more than just press review copies to give away and find social networking groups with specific interest in books like this and give away free copies for reviews. Although I read a lot in this genre not once did this pop up on my radar until a friend who supports her local writer gave this to me for my birthday.
December 12, 2017
When I picked this book up, I was misled into thinking a group of female inmates on a prison ship to Van Diemensland would be sharing their stories but in contrast to what is promised on the blurb, instead it’s the story of an Irish silk tradesman’s daughter’s struggle to fit in in London.
This protagonist, Rhia Mahoney, is an unlikeable brat who spends most of the book whining about her life, aside from a couple of chapters of relief from a character who doesn’t really make sense in the story until the very end, which can be interesting, but wasn’t in this case. Because of Rhia’s unlikableness, it made me apathetic to what happened to the other characters and the unravelling of the murder mystery.
This protagonist, Rhia Mahoney, is an unlikeable brat who spends most of the book whining about her life, aside from a couple of chapters of relief from a character who doesn’t really make sense in the story until the very end, which can be interesting, but wasn’t in this case. Because of Rhia’s unlikableness, it made me apathetic to what happened to the other characters and the unravelling of the murder mystery.
April 14, 2013
"The Silver Thread is the third book from Danish-born novelist and screenwriter, Kylie Fitzpatrick.
It follows the success of her first two historical novels, Tapestry and The Ninth Stone, both of which were translated into eleven languages.
Set during the 1800s, the novel’s hero is young Irishwoman Rhia Maloney. At 28, her life thus far has been slow-paced and steady, inching by as she spends her time at her parental home in Dublin." (Excerpt from full review at For Books' Sake.)
It follows the success of her first two historical novels, Tapestry and The Ninth Stone, both of which were translated into eleven languages.
Set during the 1800s, the novel’s hero is young Irishwoman Rhia Maloney. At 28, her life thus far has been slow-paced and steady, inching by as she spends her time at her parental home in Dublin." (Excerpt from full review at For Books' Sake.)
December 8, 2013
I found this a compelling read. At first I found the many charactrs confusing and the plot a little complicated for my ageing brain. Covering the opium trade in the mid-1800s, the title The Silver Thread refers to the counterfeiting and money laundering that takes place in the story. Rhia is a mature young Irish woman who is obliged to seek a position in London after her father's linen business all but collapses. Accused of a a theft she had no part of, she is imprisoned and transported to Australia. But this is no tale of someone making good in Australia. Within a year she is back in London and, with the help of an investigative journalist, solves the mystery in a most satisfying manner.
January 5, 2017
2.5 rating. I was disappointed with that the book did not start from the prison ship bound for Australia, as it had been promised in the blurb. I expected a rich story about the lives of different women been deported, but instead the first half of the book gives a slow progression to that point and even then the other women are only a backdrop for the main character. It was a slow but enjoyable look into the history of the period. There was a bit of a mystery which was moderately interesting. The main character was very self absorbed and the romance was unrealistic.
September 4, 2015
This book is set in the 1840s and follows the story of an Irish girl Rhia who is accused of theft and is sent on the convict ship Rajah.
It is a murder mystery, and as the plot unravels and we find out that Rhia has been set up by a corrupt trader and sent overseas before she can find the cause of the murder of her uncle
It is well written although it had a slow start, but I stuck with it and found it to be an enjoyable read
Well worth 4 stars
It is a murder mystery, and as the plot unravels and we find out that Rhia has been set up by a corrupt trader and sent overseas before she can find the cause of the murder of her uncle
It is well written although it had a slow start, but I stuck with it and found it to be an enjoyable read
Well worth 4 stars
July 6, 2013
A very atmospheric novel. Victorian London in 1840.Following Rhia a shipping merchant,s daughter from Ireland. She goes to London to seek employment as a governess after her fathers warehouse burns down & then she is convicted of theft & transported to Australia. Plenty of good characters & a plot full of action I found this novel very enjoyable.
February 21, 2015
After reading so many good reviews about this one, I was looking forward to reading it with much anticipation, but I found myself searching unsuccessfully for that elusive thread that would tie all the subplots together. Perhaps I didn't stay with it long enough but I became incredibly bored and gave up. Life is far too short to waste time waiting for a book to become worth reading.
February 12, 2013
Haven't quite finished it but it's an outstanding novel: beautifully written with a fascinating and novel storyline with some coincidental plot elements with Tracey Chevalier's latest novel ... but far superior!!
August 8, 2014
Historically interesting
Historically interesting
Too much romance for me,but I enjoyed the basic story of women's situations in those days.And very interesting the fate of the women shipped to Australia.
Historically interesting
Too much romance for me,but I enjoyed the basic story of women's situations in those days.And very interesting the fate of the women shipped to Australia.
September 12, 2015
A great historical fiction read with romance, murder, mystery and adventure linking Ireland, England and Australia in the 1800's. I loved the patchwork of colour, texture, fabric and thread that stitched the story together.
September 21, 2015
A fantastic read! Fascinating insight into the lives of prisoners transported to Australia. And then to discover that the Rajah quilt made on the voyage out to Australia, by the female prisoners still exists. That was a bonus. Beautifully crafted tale that I highly recommend.
October 3, 2012
4.5 stars actually...
http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/i...
http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/i...
June 8, 2013
I really enjoyed this book. A great read. Beautifully written.
July 23, 2018
Loved The Silver Thread. Beautifully written. Got me from page one. Couldn't put it down. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews