Book Review: The Silence by Don DeLillo
Several years ago I read Zero K, a science fiction novel by Don DeLillo. I recall being impressed by the elegance of the prose but feeling that the plot was too thin to justify the length. In The Silence, a much shorter work, the plot is so minimal as to be all but nonexistent.
You could say that it is speculative fiction because it deals with a hypothetical event, but it takes place in our present time when something happens that dramatically changes everything. In short, the five characters in the book are going about their lives when all of a sudden the power goes off. The TV goes dead and their phones don’t work. Two of the characters, a couple, are on their way home from Paris to New York and their plane crash lands. After a stopover at an emergency clinic, they head to the apartment where the others await them. It is Super Bowl Sunday and they were going to watch the game together, but that never happens. Instead, in the absence of anything else to do, they take turns giving weird surrealistic rambling soliloquies that have little to do with the situation at hand. The entire story takes place in less than a day, and in the end nothing gets resolved; the story simply leaves you hanging. DeLillo does not explain what has caused the blackout, although he hints at global catastrophe.
Despite the absence of storyline, the book has a strange power. When I finished it, I wondered what would happen if the power and technology really did abruptly stop working and everyone was left to attempt to survive as best they could. I suppose that chaos and mayhem would be the inevitable result. We have become so dependent on our devices, as well as on electricity, running water in the pipes, and the ability to find out what’s going on locally and around the world within seconds that we would undoubtedly have a horrendously difficult time trying to cope.
One thing that puzzles me about this book is why the publishers insist on calling it a novel. It is touted as a novel on the cover, on the inside front flap, and even amidst the blurbs on the back, but it is really not a novel at all. It’s too short. If truth be told, it’s not even a novella. An extended short story, maybe, or a medium-length novelette. There are a little over a hundred pages, but the margins are wide, the spaces between lines are generous, the font is big, and there are numerous blank pages between sections. Not many writers have the clout for publishers to package short works such as this in hardcover and charge almost as much for them as for full books. Stephen King is one. And DeLillo. And maybe there are a few more. If you pick it up expecting to dive deeply into a rich, intense, detailed work, that’s not going to happen. It really is a very quick read. Out of curiosity I looked up the book’s page on Wikipedia, and to my surprise, a producer has acquired movie rights. I couldn’t help but think that the screenwriter would basically have to start from scratch, because very little goes on in the book. Still, it kept my interest for the brief amount of time that it took to read it, and you might enjoy it too as long as you don’t set your expectations too high.
