A review by ampersandread22
The Silent History by Matthew Derby, Eli Horowitz, Kevin Moffett
3.0
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Sprawling. The one word to describe this book. It covers a great many years, a plethora of characters, and touches on a great deal of political and social hot topics. This novel's sprawling-ness (not a word!) isn't always a great thing.
We follow the epidemic of silents from the birth of the first wave of children, to decades later, when these children have reproduced, their parents have become estranged, their condition "cured," then protested, and then the whole thing brought to an overall unsettling conclusion.
It's a book you have to pay attention to. The first dozen chapters (none more than five or six pages) are dizzying. You are introduced to a new narrator every chapter, each with their own story and relationship to the silents. And then you have to remember all these different stories, each with multiple characters each. It gets to the point that you see the name of the narrator at the beginning of the chapter, and you struggle to recall who they're linked to, and what was the last thing that happened to them? It's honestly difficult at first.
But then it's like getting hit in the head again and again: eventually you learn to duck. Eventually you remember the characters and stories by sheer repetition. It's a big book. There are a lot of stories going on. And decades of fictional history. Some characters are infrequent narrators (a shopkeeper at a mall, a politician). They come up to spice up the monotony the authors feel you're going through, hearing about the same core group of people. But these infrequent narrations tend to confuse, and muddy up the steady timeline.
Now, it is a good book. No doubt complex, which is the one thing I would expect from a piece written by three different people. But the concept of silents, and the way most of the characters approach them and support or act against them, are plausible reactions people would have were this situation a reality. I like the idea of a worldbuilding/dystopian characteristic (a section of the population born without speech) approached so big-picture, so broadly, and from so many angles. It's fascinating in a scholarly way, and the fact that most of it is so well-written really helps.
The ending is eerie and disturbing, in an interesting and bittersweet way. It's a good way to end the epic that was The Silent History, which was a unique approach to a fascinating idea.
Sprawling. The one word to describe this book. It covers a great many years, a plethora of characters, and touches on a great deal of political and social hot topics. This novel's sprawling-ness (not a word!) isn't always a great thing.
We follow the epidemic of silents from the birth of the first wave of children, to decades later, when these children have reproduced, their parents have become estranged, their condition "cured," then protested, and then the whole thing brought to an overall unsettling conclusion.
It's a book you have to pay attention to. The first dozen chapters (none more than five or six pages) are dizzying. You are introduced to a new narrator every chapter, each with their own story and relationship to the silents. And then you have to remember all these different stories, each with multiple characters each. It gets to the point that you see the name of the narrator at the beginning of the chapter, and you struggle to recall who they're linked to, and what was the last thing that happened to them? It's honestly difficult at first.
But then it's like getting hit in the head again and again: eventually you learn to duck. Eventually you remember the characters and stories by sheer repetition. It's a big book. There are a lot of stories going on. And decades of fictional history. Some characters are infrequent narrators (a shopkeeper at a mall, a politician). They come up to spice up the monotony the authors feel you're going through, hearing about the same core group of people. But these infrequent narrations tend to confuse, and muddy up the steady timeline.
Now, it is a good book. No doubt complex, which is the one thing I would expect from a piece written by three different people. But the concept of silents, and the way most of the characters approach them and support or act against them, are plausible reactions people would have were this situation a reality. I like the idea of a worldbuilding/dystopian characteristic (a section of the population born without speech) approached so big-picture, so broadly, and from so many angles. It's fascinating in a scholarly way, and the fact that most of it is so well-written really helps.
The ending is eerie and disturbing, in an interesting and bittersweet way. It's a good way to end the epic that was The Silent History, which was a unique approach to a fascinating idea.