"It was just about the idea of a silence settling in a marriage," author Abbie Greaves told Her of her debut novel, The Silent Treatment. "Would that be possible, under what circumstances? And under what circumstances would you stay?"

The book - which was officially released on April 2 - tells the story of Maggie and her husband, Frank - who hasn't spoken to her in six months. They've lived in the same house, slept in the same bed and even eaten at the same table, all without exchanging any words. And while she has several ideas as to why he husband has fallen silent, it isn't until a heartbreaking event occurs that Frank begins to unravel the secrets that have forced silent. The inspiration for The Silent Treatment came during her commute one day, when she happened upon a copy of a newspaper in the Tube - and one story in particular caught her eye. "And in the news section, on one of the sidebars, there was this little story - 200 words, probably no more - about a couple in Japan who hadn't spoken for 20 years," she recalled. "This is bizarre, but it gets slightly stranger: their youngest son, who was 18, had therefore never seen his parents speak to one another. And in complete desperation, he reached out to a television crew to try and stage a reunion. I honestly just couldn't stop thinking about it." But it wasn't just the story of the couple in question that caught her attention. "It was just about the idea of a silence settling in a marriage - would that be possible, under what circumstances? And under what circumstances would you stay? From there, that as the when the characters of Frank and Maggie came to me - and this idea of the mystery, [and the secret] that causes Frank to just fall silent." As for the secret itself - no spoilers here, so we're definitely not going to be revealing that - Greaves told Her that it remained "broadly" the same throughout the process of working on the novel. "In my mind, I have this idea of a couple who were so deeply devoted to each other, you know, that their love had endured all these things over the years. And while things may never have been easy, they always made it through," she continued. "And I was thinking what would be the final straw for a couple like this just lapse into complete silence? So I suppose it was a question of 'what if', and then when I sort of struck upon the idea that I had, I kind of knew that it fitted - so then it was just a case of planning my plot out so that it worked its way there." The book is divided into two core points of view: Frank's silence and Maggie's silence, allowing each half of the couple to share their version of what happened. And while it allows the reader to dive deeper into the couple's backstory, it also turns out that the switch between the two perspectives was one of the more tricky parts to write. "The second half [of The Silent Treatment] definitely felt harder to write; I rewrote that more times than the first, and I think [that was partly due to figuring out] how to distribute the secrets, the twists and the turns, as it were, without it being repetitive or boring," she explained. "I suppose the second thing [to consider] was the pace of it, because when you have a big reveal at the end of the book, you don't want people to get bored and start flipping pages in the middle." The Silent Treatment's big secret was one that happened "organically" while she was working on the first draft of the novel - and while there was "definitely" temptation to drop in some clues as to what it could be earlier in the book, Greaves recalled how she felt it was important to "pull them back." [caption id="attachment_503079" align="alignnone" width="2048"] Abbie Greaves
Photo by Charlotte Knee[/caption] "I think that was one of the things I had to work hard to kind of pull them back. And it's, and it's interesting, the book isn't a thriller by any means - but whenever there's a mystery, and clues to the untie, you definitely have to kind of write as if you're writing a thriller; you have to kind of pay attention to not dropping things too early - which is really hard to do in practice," she said. The author also admitted that her favourite part of the book was a "toss up" between two different parts: the development of the characters of Frank and Maggie and getting to know them. "Lots of early readers said that they really loved Frank found him really easy to warm to. But by contrast, they really like Maggie just because she felt like a kind of a rounded woman, kind of ironically, by the fact that she's not just round and smooth. She has these sharp edges, she has these really contradictory and I hope authentic opinions on motherhood and grief and all these other things," she explained. "[My favourite part of the book] would be either creating really rounded characters or just fleshing out the relationship between them. And I found kind of the sections I enjoyed writing the most, strangely, were probably the more emotional ones where they're kind of trying to describe what someone who's been their whole life means to them." And while she acknowledges that it's a bit of a difficult time to have a book hitting the (digital) shelves, the author explained that she's trying to keep as "positive as possible". "Hopefully people will still be able to discover it and read it," she added. She also shared a bit about what fans can expect from her second novel - and yeah, she's definitely got us hooked. "So I'm editing my second book, which, all going well, will be out next year. It's called The Ends Of The Earth - it's similar [to The Silent Treatment] in that there's a love story with a mystery in it," she explained. "It tells the story of a woman called Mary O'Connor, who every evening, she stands alone outside Ealing Broadway train station with a song that reads 'Come Home Jim'. But no one knows who he is or where he's gone."

• The Silent Treatment by Abbie Greaves, published by Century, is available now.