Fiona McPhillips Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Fiona McPhillips
Fiona McPhillips is an Irish screenwriter, journalist, and author. Her own work has appeared in Hobart, The Manchester Review, and Barren Magazine, as well as others. She is an editor at The Forge literary magazine.

“When We Were Silent”, her debut novel, was the runner up for the 2021 Crime Writer’s Association Debut Dagger.

Fiona doesn’t plot that much for her novels beyond knowing a simple beginning, middle, and end of what will happen.

“When We Were Silent” was born in 2020 when a couple things came together for Fiona at the time. First was that she had the good fortune to read “Bird by Bird”, Anne Lamott’s book on writing. Her big takeaway from that book was she should write about her childhood. Lamott describes this as the period of your life when you’re so intensely interested in the world that your powers of observation are so acute and you feel things rather intensely. So she returned to her school days.

At this same time, she was listening to Where is George Gibney?, the BBC podcast about the former Irish swimming coach that evaded prosecution in 1994 for the years of abuse of all the young swimmers that were in his care. She was so inspired and moved by the people that spoke out against him, and they painted such a clear portrait of how he was allowed to keep abusing the kids for so very long, how slow everybody was to believe that he was even capable of it and to comprehend the full horror of what “it” truly was.

As she began writing the novel, she wanted to marry these two things together. The loyalty, determination, and joy that she remembers from her own teen years and the forces which attempt to steal that power away.

In order to create each of the settings in the novel, she visited some of these places in real life however she also spent a great deal of time walking the paths on Google maps to make sure she didn’t miss out on any important details. And even then, she had to delve back into the past and seek out some old pictures in order to make sure she could describe every time and place as authentically as was possible.

Highfield Manor was created off of memories from the convent school that Fiona herself attended and swimming club and a healthy dose of Google maps and images and archive pictures. She did her best to focus in on the smaller details, the gravel path which runs around the school. The chequer board tiles on the corridors. Then she kept on leading the reader along these trails so that they would get to know them better and feel as though they were actually there.

She feels that Highfield Manor is much more than just a setting, it is the whole entire ethos which drives this narrative along. In fact, it is more of antagonist than any of her characters. So it was pretty important to present this aesthetic which was a gateway into an exclusive world of privilege and wealth, which also held sinister and secretive undertones.

Since she was runner up for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger in 2021, she was in the fortunate position of having publishers and agents asking to read her finished manuscript. But unfortunately there was none. She’d just written the few chapters she needed to enter into the contest with.

Fiona set a deadline for herself of nine months and she is not sure that there could have been any greater motivation for herself than knowing that there were people waiting to read this novel she was working on. It also helped her to think commercially from the beginning in terms of what type of book it was that she was writing and how it would sit in the marketplace alongside of her comps, “The Girls”, “My Dark Vanessa”, and “The Secret History”.

Fiona found that it was easier to work without any of the distractions of the school run and all the never ending activities. She was also incredibly lucky to get an Arts Council literature bursary for that year which meant that she could focus on writing without ever having to take on any further freelance work.

“When We Were Silent” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2024. She is not there for prestige, she has come to get revenge. Lou Manson is just an outsider as she joins the final-year class at Highfield Manor, which is Dublin’s most exclusive private school. Beyond its wrought-iron gates and granite pillars is this world of privilege, potential, and wealth. However Highfield’s also hiding this dark secret, and Lou has arrived in order to expose it.

When she befriends Shauna Power, a talented and beautiful student, her plans get thrown into turmoil. Speaking out against this school would mean betraying Shauna, and Lou quickly finds that the Highfield elite would go to any lengths they could in order to protect their precious reputation, even when the consequences prove fatal.

Thirty years later, and Lou gets called to testify in this new lawsuit against Highfield. However telling the full truth means she’ll have to confront her past, and there is one story that she swore she would never tell.

This is a suspenseful novel that perfectly captures teenage anguish and intensity, as well as the lasting damage that is done by predatory men and those that enable them. This is a twisting and turning dive into a web of long buried secrets. It nails what feels like to be female, young, powerless, and dead set on redemption. This is compelling, taut, devastatingly relevant, and powerful. The twists just keep on coming, with parts of the ending make you gasp in shock and the rest makes you sigh in relief.

Readers were invested instantly, with the novel’s tight, unflinching, and poised writing. It’s a dark read that is also thought provoking and intense with some chapters are tough to digest, but the brutally honest writing, intriguing mystery, and well rounded characters keep you glued to every single page.