The Quality of Silence. A Book Review.

Have you ever decided to read a book based solely on its setting?  Such was the case for me with The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton.  This novel is set in Alaska, more specifically on the North Slope, in the middle of winter, and that's what drew me to the book.

The book's jacket describes the book as "thrillingly suspenseful and atmospheric".  I think that may be a bit of marketing hype.  The book is listed as a psychological thriller, which I think is inaccurate.  There is mystery, to be sure, but I don't think it rises to the level of "thriller", and I think it is political more than psychological in nature.

This is the story of Yasmin, an astrophysicist from London, and her pre-teen daughter Ruby, who is deaf.  They have arrived in Alaska to visit Matt, their husband/father, who is a wildlife photographer and who has been on location in Alaska for several months.  When they arrive, they learn that Matt has been in a catastrophic accident where an entire village had been inexplicably burned to the ground.  Unable to accept his death as fact, and unable to convince any of the authorities that Matt is alive, Yasmin and Ruby set out on their own to find him.

This was a frustrating book for me.  The descriptions of Alaska in winter were wonderfully written, but the pacing of the book was all wrong.  It seemed to drag on and on until finally we got to the point of the whole thing in the last fifty pages.  This was not one of those books you begin and can't put down until it's finished.  It was more a book you have to force yourself to continue reading in hopes it will get better.

I love a good mystery, and there was certainly a mystery to be solved here.  Was Matt really dead, or was he somehow still alive?  Where was he?  What caused the fire?  Eventually those questions were answered, but it took a long time to get to that point with no hints along the way.

The Quality of Silence gives a realistic picture of what life in northern Alaska is like in winter, especially for truckers hauling oil between the North Slope and Fairbanks.  On the other hand, the book stretched the bounds of reality when Yasmin and Ruby take off on their own to find Matt.  Yasmin convinced a trucker to give them a ride to Deadhorse.  When that trucker has to be returned to Fairbanks for medical reasons, Yasmin and Ruby set out on their own.  That Yasmin, the astrophysicist from London, can drive a big rig in Alaska in a blizzard with no problems at all seems preposterous, yet that's exactly what happens.

Overall, in spite of its flaws, I liked this book.  But I didn't love it.

A copy of The Quality of Silence was provided to me free of charge by Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest opinion.