The Silence, Don DeLillo
The Silence, Don DeLillo
3 Rating(s)
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The Silence

Author: Don DeLillo

Narrator: Laurie Anderson, Jeremy Bobb, Marin Ireland, Robin Miles, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Stuhlbarg

Unabridged: 1 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/20/2020


Synopsis

From the National Book Award–winning author of Underworld, a “daring…provocative…exquisite” (The Washington Post) novel about five people gathered together in a Manhattan apartment, in the midst of a catastrophic event.

It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. The conversation ranges from a survey telescope in North-central Chile to a favorite brand of bourbon to Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity.

Then something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed.

What follows is a “brilliant and astonishing…masterpiece” (Chicago Tribune) about what makes us human. Don DeLillo completed this novel just weeks before the advent of the Covid pandemic. His language, the dazzle of his sentences offer a kind of solace in our bewildering world. “DeLillo’s shrewd, darkly comic observations about the extravagance and alienation of contemporary life can still slice like a scalpel” (Entertainment Weekly).

“In this wry and cutting meditation on collective loss, a rupture severs us, suddenly, from everything we’ve come to rely on. The Silence seems to absorb DeLillo’s entire body of work and sand it into stone or crystal.” —Rachel Kushner

About Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is the author of seventeen novels including Underworld, Zero K, Libra, and White Noise, and the story collection The Angel Esmeralda, a finalist for the Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He has also written plays and essays. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 2025, the Academy's Gold Medal for Fiction. DeLillo has been awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

About Laurie Anderson

Laura “Laurie” Anderson is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. She is a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University, where she obtained an MFA in sculpture. Anderson started dating Reed in 1992, and was married to him from 2008 until his death in 2013.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on November 12, 2020

Don DeLillo is still giving his readers something to think about in this short, yet powerful book. It’s ominous; even the cover is somewhat haunting - black background except for a slender cell phone and the print. It’s centered around what happens on a day in the future, on Super Bowl Sunday in 202......more

Goodreads review by Violet on November 02, 2020

"This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track. He liked to stand at the front of the first car, hands flat against the glass. The train smashed through the dark. People stood on local platforms staring nowhere, a look they'd been practicing for years. His......more

Goodreads review by Ilenia on March 01, 2021

E quindi? Molti spunti brillanti, come sempre ma un racconto che sa di incompletezza.......more

Goodreads review by George on September 01, 2020

The Silence begins with the following epigraph from Albert Einstein: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Perhaps overused, even clichéd, it is all the more ominous for its inarguable truth. Though at the same time there i......more

Goodreads review by Danielle on January 30, 2022

Note: I received a free copy of this book, in exchange here is my honest review. This is a very short story. A glimpse of how people may react to loss of the world’s internet. 🤔 It’s an interesting idea. But this feels unfinished to me. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Thank you @goodreads and @simonandschuster #goodreadsgivea......more


Quotes

"A full cast propels DeLillo's latest audiobook, which portrays our current relationship with technology. At a time in the close future, an unexplained technology disruption occurs, impacting the characters of this work at various levels. An international flight to New York crash-lands; the survivors are treated in a clinic that is also affected by the blackout. The Super Bowl broadcast goes dark, forcing neighbors to interact. DeLillo reflects on the nature of humanity, and who we've become. Marin Ireland's centering narrative anchors the stellar performances. Memorable characters include a gruff sports gambler who is reduced to watching a blank screen, portrayed by Jay O. Sanders, and a couple who survive the crash and are left to observe the aftermath, portrayed by Jeremy Bobb and Robin Miles. The collective performances make this story resonate more deeply."