Product Description

A captivating tale of two remarkable and extraordinary young people - Marnie, a courageous young woman, and Raver, a strange and spirited young man - whose only real crimes are that they are different. Set within a chilling world of predjudices and hypocrisy, ignorance and self-righteousness, The Raging Quiet explores the tenderness of love and friendship and the power to overcome the injustice of being different. This is the story of two outsiders in medieval times. Both are set apart from their small community: Marnie because she is a newcomer, brought to the seaside village by her new - and much older - husband, and Raver because he is the village lunatic. The distrust surrounding Marnie increases when her husband suddenly dies. Her subsequent isolation pushes her towards Raver - and an important discovery: the villagers have mistaken his deafness for madness. The two outsiders soon develop a rudimentary sign language. But their precious new friendship is cut short when the villagers misconstrue their strange, private communication, and put Marnie on trial for witchcraft...Suspenseful, tender and compassionate, The Raging Quiet effortlessly draws the reader into a chilling world of bigotry, ignorance and self-righteousness. Despite the historical setting, it is a world that is still all too recognisable as our own.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122610 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
With a story shimmering with the romanticism of a fairy tale but told with the vivid detail and suspense of a modern novel, New Zealand author Sherryl Jordan has crafted a riveting book, reminiscent of the work of Thomas Hardy. In an ancient time, a newly wed girl is taken to a seaside thatched cottage by her much older husband. His drunken lovemaking repels her, but Marnie must endure because he is the lord's middle son and she has married him to save her family from starvation. When he is killed in a fall she feels more release than grief, in spite of the village rumors that she caused his death with a witch's curse. Suspicions grow when she befriends an outcast, "mad" boy called Raver whose rages and yammerings look to villagers like the work of the devil. But Marnie realizes that the boy is deaf and his bursts of anger come from his inability to communicate. With the help of the kindly and wise village priest, she begins to invent a sign language for him. A tender love grows between them in the cottage, but Marnie still fears the marriage bed. Meanwhile, the scandalized villagers spy on the "witch," and at last force her to endure the bloodcurdling ordeal of trial by hot iron. Readers will gobble up this entrancing story, and may want to move on to Cynthia Voigt's Jackaroo, Michael Cadnum's In a Dark Wood, and perhaps Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. (Ages 12 to 15) --Patty Campbell, Amazon.com

About the Author
Sherryl Jordan is a prominent New Zealand author. She has worked with deaf children for a number of years and has always loved sign language. Sherryl Jordan extensively travelled the British Isles to research The Raging Quiet; she lives in Tauranga, New Zealand.

Customer Reviews

Such a moving, beautiful tale...
This must be one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. A story about outcasts, people who are different, and how you should never judge a person before you get to know them.

The tale starts with Marnie Isherwood, who has just married Isake Isherwood (who is old enough to be her dad) to save her family, and escpae from the lies the boys at her old home used to tell about her. But married life isn't the bliss she had once dreamed of, and Marnie finds it so unbearable she prays to God to do something to make it stop, and when her husband dies in an accident the next day, she is distraught and runs to teh priest, saying she killed him. Of course, the preist makes her see sense and how it wasn't an accident, but the towns people, hearing her confess, will not forget about her husbands death and belive she was the one to cause it and not to be trusted. So Marnie becomes an outcast, met with hatred wherever she goes, but for the kind priest and the local madboy, Raven, whom she forms a specail bond with. It is only after a noisy night that would have awoken the heavens that Marnie finally realises why it is that Raven seems to mad to understand human communication and thought to be possessed by devils, because he can't hear!

The rest of the story tells of Marnie's attempt to communicate with Raven, their rudemantory sign launguage, and the townfolks widening distrust, now weaved with ideas that she is a witch, and in a time when witches were still killed if found guilty, Marnie falls into alot of danger.

It is not only teh story though that makes this such an unforgettable book. The author's writing style is perfect, giving a fluent, entertaining read, with so much descrcription and beauty, you could truly feel Marnie's pain, frustration, anger, worry, sadness and love, and fall in love with each of teh different charactors, whether it be the priest, Raven, or Marnie herself. The gpood charactors are so likeable, the evil ones easy to hate, and the story itself is faultless, and gives a depth rarely available in teenge books today.

The only things I was dissapointed about where not finding out what had happened to Marnie's dad to make him paralysed in the first place, and never knowing what Father Brannin had written to Marnie and Raven in teh book he gave them.

Beautiful story, must read.

A well thought out novel
As a deaf person, I identified fully with the frustration that Raven felt in trying to communicate with people and give full marks to Sherryl Jordan for her well thought out research in making the novel come alive and to show that the social exclusion of outsiders in the novel's historical setting can very much be in evidence today. Strong all round suspense lift this novel above many that I've read and doesn't sursprise me that Sherryl Jordan is an award winning novelist in her native New Zealand.

The Raging Quiet-best ever
I think that the raging quiet is the best book that i have ever read in my entire life. Everything is so well described and i really felt for the characters.
It is all about a young girl called Marnie who has to move to a small village away from her family with her new and much older husband. When he dies she befriends the village 'mad man' and figures out why he has mad out bursts but you'll have to read the book to find out!!
I love the way that Ms Jordan has used her experiances to write a truly amazing book. It is the only book that has ever made me cry and i could not possibly say how many times i have read it. The Raging Quiet is the best book in the world. I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a really good book!!