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The Silent Land
by
Graham Joyce
Award-winning novelist and cult favorite Graham Joyce transports readers to a mysterious world of isolation and fear with a hypnotically dark story about a young couple trapped by an avalanche in the remote French Pyrenees. . . a daring and powerful novel about love, loss, and rebirth.
In the French Pyrenees, a young married couple is buried under a flash avalanche while sk...more
In the French Pyrenees, a young married couple is buried under a flash avalanche while sk...more
ebook, 240 pages
Published
March 29th 2011
by Anchor
(first published November 18th 2010)
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i have always called graham joyce "jonathan carroll-lite." and there is nothing wrong with graham joyce - i keep reading his books, don't i? but they are always seem to take place in the same neighborhood as one of jc's tales, just missing a certain je ne sais quoi that jonathan carroll would have supplied. but this book is just ripped out of jonathan carroll's diary, man. this is like dean koontz trying to write a horror novel set in maine. you are setting yourself up for judgment, my friend, a...more
An engrossing story that starts with a married couple caught up in an avalanche. From the cover and title you get the impression this is a post apocalyptic story, the only similarity to being that kind of story is that they are the only ones who seem to survive an incident in the whole village. All the holiday reps and tourists gone but everything seems eerie and strange. One strange occurrence is that there is an abundant supply of food in the stores and the meat does not go off. They try to sk...more
Ever since the series ended, there has been this Lost-shaped hole in my life that nothing could fill. I tried other TV shows - The Event (too boring), FlashForward (too stupid). I tried books - House of Leaves (too pretentious), Gene Wolfe (too literary). I craved that Crazy Weird Shit with the popcorny hooks and the unrelenting puzzle torrents, and just the right amount of cheese. But nothing fit the bill.
Strangely enough, the only two things I've found in the last couple of years that have bo...more
Strangely enough, the only two things I've found in the last couple of years that have bo...more
True silence. The freezing of all sounds. It wasn’t possible in the modern world, to listen to the sound of true silence. Perhaps not even in the ancient world, either: there was wind in the desert; insects in the depths of the forest; wave activity in the middle of the ocean. Nature did not tolerate silence. Only death accepted silence; and there was silence here.In The Silent World, Graham Joyce’s eighteenth book and 2011 World Fantasy Award and British Fantasy Award nominee, a young couple,...more
Goodreads First Reads Giveaway book.
The cover of this book is totally fantastic. If you slip the dust jacket off, you're left with different letters of the title on the book and different letters on the dust jacket. I puzzled over the letters on each for a while, hoping to find a word hidden, scrabble-like, in the letters, but even my scrabble dominating life couldn't find anything interesting.
As for the book itself - it had atmosphere, I'll give it that. Unfortunately, we're stuck in our atmosp...more
The cover of this book is totally fantastic. If you slip the dust jacket off, you're left with different letters of the title on the book and different letters on the dust jacket. I puzzled over the letters on each for a while, hoping to find a word hidden, scrabble-like, in the letters, but even my scrabble dominating life couldn't find anything interesting.
As for the book itself - it had atmosphere, I'll give it that. Unfortunately, we're stuck in our atmosp...more
Terrible terrible book. A couple on their holiday retreat gets caught in an avalanche while skiing which they survive. When they return to their hotel, it’s deserted. The whole village is empty. They are alone. After some failed attempts to contact the outside world and some tries to get out by a car themselves, they decide that there is nothing else to do, so they ski, then they eat and have sex then ski again then ski some more and have more sex then ski ski ski ski... I have now decided that...more
Jan 17, 2012
Jenne
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
apocalypterature,
fiftyfifty-me-2012
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Too long and drawn out, it would have been much better as a short story. A disappointment...I don't know that I'll try anything else by this author. While the premise of the story was promising, there was nothing very original in the telling...it was tedious in places, predictable in its sentimental ending and in its allusions, heavy-handed.
Meh. Although this story had a good premise, the execution feel flat. Zoe and Jake were dull and two-dimensional; while the book jacket promises an illustration of the power of love, the story doesn't even come close. We never get the feel that these two have actual chemistry, and we rarely see any displays of emotion from either of them. The setting, while eerie at first, becomes dull as the story wears on. The characters express several times that, while it's only been a handful of days since...more
Mar 29, 2013
Katrina
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
e-book,
quirky-fiction
Completely re-writing this review as I've had some more time to let it sink in and I'm not suffering from insomnia at present.
The Silent Land gets a straight up three for the premise and the premise alone.
Having thought about it, this would have been much better served as a short story. As it was there was simply too much padding throughout and pages and pages of the main characters performing the most mundane of tasks, which were in no shape or form even necessary to the plot.
Joyce also seemed...more
The Silent Land gets a straight up three for the premise and the premise alone.
Having thought about it, this would have been much better served as a short story. As it was there was simply too much padding throughout and pages and pages of the main characters performing the most mundane of tasks, which were in no shape or form even necessary to the plot.
Joyce also seemed...more
Mar 13, 2013
Celeste Rousselot
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
my-written-reviews
I chose The Silent Land because Laura Miller of Salon.com described it as one of the few literary books that also contains some well-turned sex scenes. After reading Richard Ford’s Canada, a book long on ruminations, subplots and character analysis, I found Graham Joyce's book a refreshing break. And even though the plot line is simple, the thinking behind it is more complex. Not only does Joyce succinctly portray the reactions of a happily married couple caught in an avalanche at a ski resort i...more
Another Graham Joyce book done in a matter of weeks, think I've found a new author to follow! Loved this one just as much as Some Kind of Fairy Tale. Can't say much about it without giving too much away, and this is a book where you really don't know what is coming next. It starts out very Stephen King-esque, and reminiscent of an old Twilight Zone episode, but the twists and turns go from scary to poignant to terrifying to sweet, sometimes all on the same page. Towards the end it turns more int...more
Wow. This book is just amazeballs. Also, don't spoil yourself before reading it. Just don't.
I wasn't quite sure how to classify this book. I can totally believe that this book would be nominated for awards, but I'm not sure how it didn't win... then again, I haven't read the winners.
This is a deeply atmospheric book. If you ever seen the Shining, it's like that. But x 1000. And better. It's beautiful and scary and suspenseful and heartbreaking and oh, so very, very atmospheric and emotional, wh...more
I wasn't quite sure how to classify this book. I can totally believe that this book would be nominated for awards, but I'm not sure how it didn't win... then again, I haven't read the winners.
This is a deeply atmospheric book. If you ever seen the Shining, it's like that. But x 1000. And better. It's beautiful and scary and suspenseful and heartbreaking and oh, so very, very atmospheric and emotional, wh...more
It’s starting to seem as if the various books I’ve been reading in recent months (or, indeed, all the books I’ve ever read?!) – Doerr’s Memory Wall, Didion’s Blue Nights, Krauss’s Great House, Goldman’s Say Her Name, Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, et al. – are all in their own ways about how we understand time, memory, transience, human solidarity, and ongoingness against the ground bass of death. Graham Joyce’s The Silent Land is not as stylistically refined and elevated as these other titles...more
I think that the quality of a good thriller is less about story content and more about the author's voice. This author had a very subtle and sophisticated Stephen-Kingish voice. Since King is one of my favorites, it was right up my alley. After a couple of attempts I could no longer read this book at night in bed because it gave me such a creepy feeling. My heart raced and my palms sweat and I kept thinking something was going to creep up on me. It was stimulating and invigorating like a roller...more
I liked Some Kind of Fairy Story by Joyce so much that I thought I'd look for and read another one of his books. While I found this story less engaging than Some Kind of Fairy Story, I still enjoyed it. Silent Land would make a great PBS movie with elements from The Shining contributing to the mood. In Silent Land, a young couple takes some time off to go skiing and is overtaken on the sloped by an avalache. The husband digs his wife out and they return to the hotel in the village where they are...more
“Existence required order, and there was order; the laws of nature, irrevocable and immutable. Men could learn to use them, but men could not change them. Live by the rules or die trying to fight them.” –Tom Goodwin, “The Cold Equation”
But what if the world you’re in has no rules, no order, yet nature is still all around you? Well-known author Graham Joyce will take those who desire such an answer to this brain teasing question into a world of the unknown-into The Silent Land: A novel of suspens...more
But what if the world you’re in has no rules, no order, yet nature is still all around you? Well-known author Graham Joyce will take those who desire such an answer to this brain teasing question into a world of the unknown-into The Silent Land: A novel of suspens...more
I was reading an article a few weeks ago about spoilers. It said that spoilers have almost no effect on whether or not a person chooses to watch or read the thing that has been spoiled. That just because something has been "spoiled" doesn't mean a person won't enjoy the rest of the piece. I can definitely see that. I've had my fair share of stories spoiled for me but read them anyway, because the reason I read isn't for the end. It isn't just to get to the end or to figure out whodunnit. I like...more
Apr 04, 2012
Charles Dee Mitchell
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary-lit,
slipstream
While on a skiing vacation in France, a young London couple, Jack and Zoe Bennett, are caught in an avalanche. Jack, who has made it up a tree, digs Zoe out from under the snow. The event is devastating, and they fear that another avalanche is imminent. It's early morning and they are alone on the mountain. They walk back to the resort and find it deserted. Food remains set out on the kitchen counters, but no one is in sight. This sudden disappearance convinces them that the resort has been evac...more
This book hit the spot for my current mood. It was a rainy day today--so rainy, in fact that you could see nothing but grey outside, a companion to this book's white schema. I ended up reading the book all in one sitting, so it's short reading and quite compelling.
I actually really liked the characters and found them interesting. This book is the short that will reveal tidbits about their lives without delving completely in, and hops to flashbacks where appropriate, which is a style of prose th...more
I actually really liked the characters and found them interesting. This book is the short that will reveal tidbits about their lives without delving completely in, and hops to flashbacks where appropriate, which is a style of prose th...more
Saw this in the 'new in' section of my library whilst returning what was meant to be my last batch of books before reading some of the hundreds i have put onto my kindle. Ive never read any of the authors work before but something made me try it, and im so glad i did. This book has made it into the top ten reads of all time for me...for now at least! At times it even had me nervous, the men outside the window?? ooooh how was i going to sleep.. im such a wimp. I'd recommend this for an amazing qu...more
Young married couple, Jake and Zoe are on a ski holiday in the French Pyrenees when they are caught in a deadly avalanche. Miraculously, the clamor out of the piles of snow and ski their way back down to the village where they find the entire place eerily empty of people. As they try to make their way out of the village, no matter which way they go, they mysteriously find themselves back in the empty streets.
The Silent Land was an engrossing book that was hard to put down. Even though I found t...more
The Silent Land was an engrossing book that was hard to put down. Even though I found t...more
I loved this book ALMOST enough to give it 5 stars, but I usually reserve that status for books that change my life in some way, and I can't say this one really did anything more than be greatly entertaining for a week, so four it is. However, I also have to say I really really really liked this book. It was equal parts scary, captivating, suspenseful, fun, and sad. Every time I read it, I was so wrapped up in the premise (a young-ish couple completely abandoned in a ski town after an avalanche)...more
Thing 1: "peepers" is not a good substitution for "eyes", especially in the first five pages of a book.
Thing 2: It took way too long to get to the stories of Zoe and Jake; until that point (probably three-quarters of the way through), they seem to be a couple primarily interested in playful fighting, swearing, drinking wine and having sex. There's no real depth to either of them, until you get to the Christmas Tree and Jake's dad.
Thing 3: The end is visible from approximately the point of the a...more
Thing 2: It took way too long to get to the stories of Zoe and Jake; until that point (probably three-quarters of the way through), they seem to be a couple primarily interested in playful fighting, swearing, drinking wine and having sex. There's no real depth to either of them, until you get to the Christmas Tree and Jake's dad.
Thing 3: The end is visible from approximately the point of the a...more
Wow! This moves rocket fast. Exact right amount of words! Clean, wonderfully engaging (but then I'm a BIG spec fiction buff, so take that into account). Right out of Twilight Zone. Good job, Graham! Really loved it! Read it in like 3 days which is awesome for me since I read really slow and don't get a lot of time to free read.
Set up: Married couple goes skiing, get caught in avalanche, end up thinking they got out safe...but...deserted hotel when they get back, abandoned town. Very creepy! The...more
Set up: Married couple goes skiing, get caught in avalanche, end up thinking they got out safe...but...deserted hotel when they get back, abandoned town. Very creepy! The...more
The one word that describes this book is `eerie'. The atmosphere, the situation the two people find themselves in, the deserted town and the visions that seemingly only Zoe can see are haunting and mysterious.
They try to drive out of town but the car breaks down, they try to walk away but end up on the same road that brings them back to the town, they ski over the mountain but, again, they find themselves back to the same familiar buildings.
"It's almost like something is keeping us here in this...more
They try to drive out of town but the car breaks down, they try to walk away but end up on the same road that brings them back to the town, they ski over the mountain but, again, they find themselves back to the same familiar buildings.
"It's almost like something is keeping us here in this...more
Not bad, but not exactly great either. Joyce has a terse prose style that sometimes veers into the too terse - sentence after sentence starting with "he" or "she," the barest bones of description. It's certainly not bad prose, it's just not the sort of thing I like. Of greater concern was the dialogue, which was in substance quite convincing (the petty mood shifts and sniping that accompany even a strong relationship like the one between the married leads) but felt wooden and unrealistic in term...more
Jake and Zoe are skiing in the Pyrenees on an anniversary trip when there's an avalanche. They barely survive (there's a pretty claustrophobia-inducing description of Zoe's entrapment upside down in the snow). When they make their way back down the slope to their hotel, they find it deserted. Everybody's been evacuated, they conclude, because of the avalanche's danger, so after they warm up they decide to leave too. Except that...they can't. And things get weirder and weirder after that. Sort of...more
Jun 15, 2011
Julia
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
magical-realism,
literature-fiction
I've read other books by Joyce, who has a very dark sensibility in the realm of magical realism. This book makes me want to re-read those books, since I very literally could not put this one down after I got to the halfway point.
The plot seems simple enough--Zoe and Jake are a young couple on a ski vacation in the French Alps and are caught in an avalanche. But what Joyce does then is weave a story of love and loss in a magical web that is filled with both darkness and light.
Some of the most to...more
The plot seems simple enough--Zoe and Jake are a young couple on a ski vacation in the French Alps and are caught in an avalanche. But what Joyce does then is weave a story of love and loss in a magical web that is filled with both darkness and light.
Some of the most to...more
The premise of this novel is great: wife and husband, Zoe and Jake, are on a ski vacation in Europe. Early one morning, they hit the slopes before any of the other skiers and are caught in an avalanche. Jake escapes and then manages to dig Zoe out. They return to the resort village where they are staying and find that it has been completely abandoned: there is not a single soul to be found. They are confident that the village has been evacuated due to fears of another avalanche. Zoe and Jake try...more
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Graham Joyce is an English writer of speculative fiction and the recipient of numerous awards for both his novels and short stories.
After receiving a B.Ed. from Bishop Lonsdale College in 1977 and a M.A. from the University of Leicester in 1980. Joyce worked as a youth officer for the National Association of Youth Clubs until 1988. He subsequently quit his position and moved to the Greek islands...more
More about Graham Joyce...
After receiving a B.Ed. from Bishop Lonsdale College in 1977 and a M.A. from the University of Leicester in 1980. Joyce worked as a youth officer for the National Association of Youth Clubs until 1988. He subsequently quit his position and moved to the Greek islands...more
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“The blood in my veins is frozen but it sings of love.”
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5 people liked it
“She couldn't see him, but his voice was like light through a stained-glass window in a cathedral.”
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3 people liked it
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Feb 09, 2012 07:46pm
Feb 09, 2012 07:49pm