The Quality of Silence - Rosamund Lupton

This book was very well written, but extremely painful to read, and I mean that sincerely. If you are like me, you will read this book wrapped up in a warm blanket in front of a fire, cupping a mug of hot chocolate — even if you read it in the summer. It’s winter in Alaska, with icy roads, mountains of snow, debilitating blizzards, white out conditions, and Jasmin needs to get to her husband, missing (likely dead) from a small town near Deadhorse. Honestly, the destination alone was enough to give me pause. Oh, and yeah, Jasmin is driving, and she’s never driven a truck. This is no ordinary truck either, or ordinary roads, and there is tremendous skill required to navigate them. Impossibly, someone is following them, intent on sabotaging their journey. Despite all this, she hurdles desperately into the unknown, dragging her innocent deaf daughter along with her.

 

Did I lose you yet? Shockingly, despite the almost wholesale unbelievability of this plot, I was compelled to finish the story. Jasmin is strangely sympathetic, despite the fact that I loathed her rash actions and the unnecessary peril she placed her daughter in. But I cared what happened to them. I thought the storyline with the mystery person following them was at once ridiculous and comforting. After all, the roads were supposed to be impassable, and yet here is this guy, following them. In the end, too many loose ends were tied together, and the plot was thin at best, but it is a testament to Lupton’s strong writing and character development that I would recommend this book, but perhaps to a heartier sort than me. Nevertheless, I would say I learned a few things along the way, in spite of myself.