Book Review: The Silence by Don DeLillo

The silence

★☆☆☆☆

Maybe I’m still in a bad mood from a recent book I read, which I also one-stared, but this one was terrible.

I think it’s supposed to be a message about how scrambled our brains are due to our fixation on technology, but I really don’t even know. It was weird. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t interesting, even though the premise seems interesting.

To quote from the description: “…something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed.”

A bunch of people get together at a Super Bowl party and essentially have conversations with themselves that make no sense and have no relation to each other after all the power goes out and every screen is blank.

Let’s straight up take a passage that appears in the later half of the book as people are talking “with” each other:

Martin resumes speaking for a time, back to English, unaccented.
Internet arms race, wireless signals, countersurveillance.
“Data breaches,” he says. “Cryptocurrencies.”
He speaks this last term looking directly at Diane.
Cryptocurrencies.
She builds the word in her mind, unhyphenated.
They are looking at each other now.
She says, “Cryptocurrencies.”
She doesn’t have to ask him what this means.
He says, “Money running wild. Not a new development. No government standard. Financial mayhem.”
“And it is happening when?”
“Now,” he says. “Has been happening. Will continue to happen.”
“Cryptocurrencies.”
“Now.”
“Crypto,” she says, pausing, keeping her eyes on Martin. “Currencies.”
Somewhere within all those syllables, something secret, covert, intimate.

I mean, I was actually laughing because this whole thing is ridiculous. “Crypto,” she says, pausing, keeping her eyes on Martin. “Currencies.”

I think I needed to be high as a kite to appreciate this book.

The Silence by Don DeLillo

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