30 May 2026
issue 30 May 2026
Comments
This is the kind of book I wish I had the chance to sit down and discuss with the author. It is accessible without sacrificing academic rigour, astute and ingenious in its close readings and balances breadth with depth admirably. But why on earth does it have a singular title, given that the whole thrust of the argument depends on silence being a multifarious phenomenon?
The reader encounters the enigma of silence as rapture, failure, slyness, avoidance, challenge. Silence is both built into literature and a kind of enwrapping, enclosing ocean, out of which words will emerge and back into which they will sink, rather like the primordial chaos at the beginning of Genesis. Speaking or writing about silence is inherently paradoxical. Many years ago I interviewed A.S. Byatt, who made a throwaway remark about turning down Celebrity University Challenge. When I expressed surprise, she beamed, sounding like Sister Monica Joan in Call the Midwife: ‘But what if I were struck by nominal aphasia at a crucial moment?’ I silently thought that if you can use that term your chances of suffering from it are quite slender.
