Monday, May 9, 2011

31: The Weight of Silence


The Weight of Silence, by Heather Gudenkauf, is every parent’s worst nightmare. Calli, rent mute by a traumatic event, goes missing in the middle of the night with her best friend, and her voice in the world, Petra. Calli leaves at the arm of her angry, drunk father, and Petra leaves because, the reader assumes, she is following Calli. However, this is not all true.

The storyline weaves through past and present and through flashbacks, and everyone has a voice in the book. I thought the different voices were interesting, and how each character was handling the tragedy, but the whole book just didn’t work for me.

I think this is too close to a nightmare of mine to really read the book and enjoy it. All I wanted to know was make sure that Calli and Petra were okay. I felt like there were parts of the story that should have been expounded on, and that parts were missing entirely (like the whole, “how did Petra get out of the house?”) thing.

I give this one a 6/10. I just did not love it, but again, maybe because it’s such a fear of mine.

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