Silence in October

by Jens Christian Grøndahl

Book Overview

After eighteen years of marriage, an art historian wakes up one morning to find his wife standing in the bedroom doorway with her bags packed, leaving him with no explanation. Alone in his Copenhagen apartment, he tries to make sense of his enigmatic marriage and life. Memories of driving a cab, quiet walks in the snow, and intense sojourns in Paris and New York pass through his mind in fleeting images. The more he thinks of his wife, however, the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156012979
• ISBN13: 9780156012973
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Written like poetry

Interesting. Half of our book group did not like the book at all. But upon discussion we learned that it was the central character that they disliked. The discussion was very lively which proves to me that it is a book very much worth reading. We are not supposed to like everyone we encounter in a given book, we are supposed to find characters so well drawn that we can actually form opinions about them. I thought the writing was truly elegant and I recommend it without reservation.

Brilliant

I was so gripped by 'Silence in October' that I was compelled to finish it in two days. With themes similar to that of the film 'My Dinner with Andre' and the poetry of American writer jani johe webster, this profound novel addresses the core of our being with beautiful and unrelenting questions on meaning and being. The prose is clean, and the content brings this novel into the circle of truly great literature. The narrator's meditation on the departure of his wife, the meaning of that relationship and other 'defining' relationships, resonates with our own experience of the mystery of intimacy. Do our relationships over time define and create us, and who is the person still within, the person who might have existed had these relationships perhaps not (randomly?) happened? As the narrator reflects so astutely of his wife, 'When did it dawn on her that there was still an unknown woman trying to draw breath through her nose and mouth, a woman I had never set eyes on, behind her familar features?' The narrator, who, for undoubtedly metaphorical reasons, remains unnamed, also reflects on the passage of time, the inadeqacy of words, and most powerfully, the nature of projection onto another: 'I thought I was writing about Astrid, or about Ines and Elisabeth for that matter, but in fact I was only writing about myself, and when conversely I tried to recall my own thoughts and feelings through the years, I merely interpreted the fleeting shadows that an Elisabeth, an Astrid, and an Ines in turn threw on the valud of my skull's mumbling loneliness.' One cannot help but read this novel and think of Andre reiterating the most essential human questions of 'Who are we? Where do we come from? And where are we going?', or the line from jani johe webster's powerful prose poem 'the weariest river,' in which she writes, 'and if there be no self discover, but rather a collection of aped masks, fastened to a dangling puppet, what then? we all have to make this search, do you think, before death nudges us for the last time?' And like the film 'My Dinner with Andre' and webster's poetry, there is, in this novel, both a disturbing, haunting element, and yet also an element of the possibility of emanicapation from our illusions.

Masterful....

I generally don't read a lot of fiction unless something original about the story captivates me. I picked this one up for no particular reason and found the subject matter compelling - the odd dynamic in relationships whereby you can spend years with someone and share all levels of deep intimacy and yet still not really know them. Grondahl's work on a pure story level was incredibly satisfying, exploring the complexity of the human psyche and portraying the protagonist's deep introspection and trains of thought with wonderful skill. The story was also written in the first person with no real interference from any all-knowing narrator - no small feat. All told, this is a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece of work. It is a book you cannot (or should not) read quickly; rather I found myself getting through chapters or even different scenes within chapters and having to stop and think about what I read. Highly recommended!

not a light read

This book ranks with Norman Rush's Mating and Tim Parks's Destiny as a deep and absorbing portrayal of a relationship viewed from the inside of one person's psyche. The main character is a man in his forties at a turning point in his marriage whose story is told very narrowly in the first person. I don't think the reader ever even learns his name. We are never told anything objectively about his experiences but Grondahl brilliantly puts us inside his head. This book requires some concentration to read since the story is so internalized but the effort is more than worth it.

Superbly written, superbly translated.

Grondahl is something of a revelation... totally unknown, unreviewed, unpromoted in the US, I was lucky to find Silence in October on the shelf of my local library. After 20 pages I knew it was a book I wanted to own. I was completely immersed in the truth of the feelings described (as anyone who has been married will be) and the beauty of the language. Ms. Born has done a brilliant translation too, I doubt the prose could be more beautiful even in Danish! The only author who warrants comparison is Javier Marias from Spain - similar, but darker. I hope we will see more of Mr. Grondahl in English; otherwise I shall have to learn Danish.