A History of Silence is a touching memoir about a country and a landscape. It’s about the devastation in Christchurch after the 2011 earthquake and the faultlines that this event opened up in Lloyd Jones’ understanding of his own family. It’s about how easily we erase from our history the stories that we find inconvenient.
In his typically lyrical and engaging prose, Jones embarks on a journey of discovery. On this journey he finds out more about his country and the landscape that surrounds him, but he also uncovers the truth about his family. This truth is completely unexpected and changes everything. This deeply moving book is about loss and survival and silence.
In his typically lyrical and engaging prose, Jones embarks on a journey of discovery. On this journey he finds out more about his country and the landscape that surrounds him, but he also uncovers the truth about his family. This truth is completely unexpected and changes everything. This deeply moving book is about loss and survival and silence.
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Reviews
Throughout this brilliant memoir, the ultimate impact of the book lies with how openly and humanely Jones responds, as an author and a son, to a truer picture of his family
Poetically observed detail and an affecting evocation of the past will reward readers interested in the way our history can shape us
Lloyd is a masterful writer and his exquisite prose renders a city in much the same manner as a photographer, capturing the disaster before him in all its fine, grainy detail . . . A History of Silence is a unique and mesmerising book
A History of Silence is as . . . wilful and compelling as his fiction
A pleasurable experience, gently paced and studded with lovely phrasing
Very moving portrayal of a disquieting family mystery
Eloquently portrayed
His book is a knockout, a fresh immaculately paced study of the process by which old information becomes new, and one of the bravest and best-written memoirs I have read
A History of Silence is ravishing, a work that takes the 2011 Christchurch earthquake as its touchstone and turns into an almost Joycean ramble through his memories of his family. It is often beautifully, painfully frank about how little he knew his late parents, as he obliquely traces their lives back to the start of the 20th century, sleuthing about to find the painful secrets in his mum's past. It's a work about the precariousness of our domestic realities, a cryptic true-life detective story
One of the bravest and best-written memoirs I have read