The Silent [Paperback]

Jack Dann (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Flamingo (1998)
• ISBN-10: 0732266416
• ISBN-13: 978-0732266417
• ASIN: B000VAJZY6
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Least Among Recent Civil War Novels, November 13, 2001

By 

M. C. Passarella "lpassarella" (Lawrenceville, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Silent (Paperback)

Jack Dann's "The Silent" features a mix of overheated spiritualism, glaringly anarchronistic dialogue, and an embarrassingly voyeuristic approach to sex that left me chuckling inwardly at the same time I reproached myself for wasting my time on this bit of historical deconstructionism. Interestingly, one scene in a field hospital and another describing preparations for battle were so vivid and truthful that I was even more astounded by Dann's novelistic chicanery. Lump this in with "Cold Mountain" as one of the more wayward and self-indulgent misuses of American history in a novel.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Civil War from a Child's perspective...., February 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Silent (Hardcover)

This book shows a different perspective of the Civil War. How would a child react to all the horrors of a war? Probably much like the way Mundy did...with fear, confusion, fantasy, feverish dreams.....not knowing whom to trust...guilt for not helping his parents (and others), when actually there was nothing he could have done to help. This was an accurate portrayal of a child thrown into the midst of the most horrible of conditions, and how he copes (or doesn't cope) with the madness around him. This book was very good, and I highly recommend it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "a heartbreaking, breathtaking novel" --Douglas Barbour, August 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Silent (Hardcover)

The Silent is a heartbreaking, breathtaking novel, pouring a young man's traumatic responses to the Civil War into a highly specific, desperately distanced form. As with The Memory Cathedral, his novel of Leonardo da Vinci's experiences in fifteenth century Florence, Jack Dann takes us inside the life of the time, in this case a time of savage war within the American family, all the worse for that. Although The Silent is a novel full of horror, it is also a brilliantly written work with enough touches of humor and humanity to balance the brutality it renders with such grace and intensity. The Silent is a major addition to the growing library of Civil War fiction.

Douglas Barbour, Edmonton Journal