The Quality of Silence: A Novel by Rosamund Lupton

The Quality of Silence was a very interesting, often strange novel. Parts of the story were indeed interesting, but honestly I had borrowed this book from the library instead of having received it for free from Crown Publishers in return for my honest review, I may not have finished it.  I just found the main characters hard to relate to at first.  I thought they were delusional and ridiculous for the risks they were taking, but the surprise ending changed those initial impressions.  I don't want to spoil anything for other readers, so I won't elaborate any further.  Let's just say the book has plenty of twists and suspense and is a great example of the power of love and the resilience of the human spirit.

When I look at the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data in the front of the book, it lists the following topics: Widows, deaf children, mothers and daughters, wilderness survival-Alaska.  I agree the book was about all those topics, but I honestly thought more than anything it is a discourse against fracking. 

It is true that it is about a relationship between a mother and daughter, but it's also about a relationship between a father and daughter, as well as a relationship between a husband and wife.  There is a complexity to each of those relationships in this story that I enjoyed.  Ms. Lupton did a good job developing those relationships and the characters in them.

The Quality of Silence refers to the daughter in the story, Ruby, a ten-year old girl who is deaf.  Her mother, Yasmin, is worried that Ruby will have a hard time in a hearing world if she has no voice and encourages her to speak orally, but her father Matt, a wildlife photographer, understands that she prefers to sign or use her computer and is okay with that. 

It was interesting to learn more about Alaska.  I was especially fascinated with how incredibly cold it is there and the drastic steps the characters had to take to protect themselves against the cold.  It was also rather unbelievable to me the extreme dangers that truckers in Alaska face.  Couldn't pay me enough to do that job!