The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton

On 24th November Yasmin and her deaf daughter Ruby arrived in Alaska.

Within hours they were driving alone across a frozen wilderness

Where nothing grows

Where no one lives

Where tears freeze

And night will last for another 54 days.

They are looking for Ruby’s father.

Travelling deeper into a silent land.

They still cannot find him.

And someone is watching them in the dark.

Arriving in Alaska, Yasmin isn’t greeted by her husband as she expected but by the state police and bad news.  There has been a fire in the remote village her husband has been staying in as part of his job as a wildlife photographer.  No one has survived, including him.  Ruby knows something is going on but she isn’t sure what because she is deaf.  Reading lips where she can, though, she knows it isn’t good and she knows it is likely something to do with her dad because he isn’t there to greet him.

The news of his death is something neither she or Yasmin believe.  He understands the wilderness, he would have survived.  He had called them after the fire struck.  They need to get to him.  And so they head out, initially hitching a lift with a long distance lorry driver before getting behind the wheel themselves, braving the brutal landscape and a winter storm, and trying not to be too afraid of the headlights that dog them – keeping pace but never getting too close.

It’s all pretty incredible and somewhat unbelievable and I now know more about ice truckers than I ever wanted or needed to.  But it was also kind of fun – the chasing through the ice and Yasmin and Ruby’s battle to survive – and I enjoyed the book as a result.  I liked Yasmin and Ruby and wanted them to succeed – I thought Ruby, especially, was well drawn.

I thought the book was well written despite (or in spite of) the leaps in logic it had to make (a woman who has never driven an eighteen-wheeler manages to make it hundreds of miles without any training and just one conversation with a trucker?) and kept me interested and turning the pages. It might not be for everyone but if you can suspend belief, it is worth a read – liked this one.

Emma

Note: I received this book from blogging for books in return for a fair and honest review.  All thoughts, feelings and opinions about the book are my own.