Customer Reviews

The Silent

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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

"It was around the time I saw the spirit dog and became invisible that I forgot how to talk. Getting to be a spirit meant you had to lose things.' This fine novel tells the horrific tale of a boy unable to escape from a hell he didn't make and can't begin to understand. Mundy McDowell, not even 13 yet, watches in silence as Yankee deserters kill his father, rape and murder his mother, and set fire to their home. He is struck dumb, his thoughts filled with recurrent `visions' of sex, death, and mutilation. The line between reality and fantasy is tenuous in his mind, all the more so because of constant hunger and illness. Mundy traverses a nightmare landscape, engaged on a demon quest, seeking an inner peace that no longer can be found. From the author of The Memory Cathedral, this is narrative storytelling at its best-so highly charged emotionally as to constitute a kind of poetry from hell. Most emphatically recommended. Library Journal, May 13, 1998 (LJ's Hot Picks)

I got this book because the professional reviews on the back cover made it sound worthwhile and interesting. Boy, was that a mistake! The book starts out well enough with a young boy's view of the Civil War and how it effects his family, his friends, his town. It goes way down hill from there. I got half-way through it after a week of nearly throwing it in the trash (and I'm one that reads quickly) and decided not to finish it. I hate that because it feels like a total waste of time. I kept hoping the story would get interesting ... and, no, I don't consider the scenes of children having sex or masturbating interesting. Why that was thrown in, I can't imagine unless it was in hopes of selling an otherwise boring book. None of the characters had any redeeming qualities. Come on! If this book's version of the Civil War were anywhere near true, this country wouldn't have pulled together and worked out the differences. I can't recommend reading "The Silent" to anyone. There isn't even historical value, in my opinion. Although the reviewers say it was well researched, I can't believe the North (and South) was as twisted as the author thinks he discovered it to be. It's just a weird, slow tale that I had to put an early end to.

This book is interesting for the first hundred pages or so. In my opinion the narration then becomes bogged down, and the story moves at a snails pace. Mundy spends a inordinate amount of time in some scenarios, which are repititious and lost my interest as a reader. After a really good beginning this book really disappointed me greatly because I really wanted to enjoy this book.

My copy had a series of questions in the back of it, as if the author thought his Civil War tome deserved to be some sort of literary classic studied in schools. I think it would be a good manuscript to be torn apart at a writers workshop. How to lose a reader's interest? How to develop paper thin characters and situations that are not fully resolved?

Jack Dann is a master of the disturbing, taking left-hand turns through our lives, past and future. As with THE MEMORY CATHEDRAL, history becomes more dramatic, mysterious, and real in the telling from the viewpoint of the odd-man-out. Whether Leonardo or the mute Mundy, Dann draws character and, more importantly, relationships with a hand sure and constantly in motion. More pointed comparisons are not to COLD MOUNTAIN, but rather CATCHER IN THE RYE and MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING. Here's hoping Dann is fascinated by another main theme of history, and soon!

"It was around the time I saw the spirit dog and became invisible that I forgot how to talk. Getting to be a spirit meant you had to lose things." This fine novel tells the horrific tale of a boy unable to escape from a hell he didn't make and can't begin to understand. Mundy McDowell, not even 13 yet, watches in silence as Yankee deserters kill his father, rape and murder his mother, and set fire to their home. He is struck dumb, his thoughts filled with recurrent `visions' of sex, death, and mutilation. The line between reality and fantasy is tenuous in his mind, all the more so because of constant hunger and illness. Mundy traverses a nightmare landscape, engaged on a demon quest, seeking an inner peace that no longer can be found. From the author of The Memory Cathedral, this is narrative storytelling at its best-so highly charged emotionally as to constitute a kind of poetry from hell. Most emphatically recommended. Library Journal, May 13, 1998 (LJ's Hot Picks)

Two years have passed since fourteen-year old Mundy McDowell observed the rape and subsequent murder of his parents. Since that brutal day on March 23, 1862, Mundy has silently wandered the Virginia battlefield, believing he is invisible. Mundy sees the first hand horror of war accompanied by a "spirit dog, a ghost of a deceased slave, and "baby Jesus". The war forces the teen to grow up fast as rape, sex, and pedophilia occurs almost as much as death.

The concept behind THE SILENT is absolutely brilliant. Seeing the Civil War from the mind of a battered teen is unique and refreshing. However, in spite of Jack Dann's obvious writing skills, he packs too many sub-plots into the novel. The mysticism is too mystical for this reviewer to ken and the too numerous rape scenes slow down the book. This novel remains a good story for Civil War buffs that do not mind seeing their heroes exposed (literally and figuratively).

Harriet Klausner

Mundy, the protagonist, completes a grand circle of experience by the time the book concludes.

The reader's experience is similar, except that there are circles within circles, by which I mean that you have the sensation of going over the same ground again and again without getting anywhere. The writing that initially seems evocative and incandescent simply wears itself out through repetition. There is a sameness to Mundy's experiences with the various solidier-mentors, as well as the interactions with the spirits and the "niggers" that eventually left me feeling impatient and irritable.

It's a very interesting concept, and I'd recommend starting the book. Even if you peter out halfway through and don't finish it--you'll have 99% of what the book has to offer anyway.