If Don DeLillo is an acquired taste, I have yet to acquire it.
This short novel--it's more of a long short story or a novella--follows rapid societal collapse after all electronics stop functioning on Super Bowl Sunday in 2022. I can see why this would come up as a "quiet apocalypse" novel for my work-in-progress as it specifically involves a significant disaster on Super Bowl Sunday.
It follows a handful of characters who gather in a Manhattan apartment to watch the big game. Two of them are late arrivals after something happens at the end of their flight.
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| Image via the Indianapolis Public Library |
I found the whole thing intensely bizarre. The characters spend much of the novel delivering monologues that sound nothing like real people. Just long strings of dialogue full of existentialist nonsense.
I'm just glad it was short. The Silence is definitely not my cup of tea. Unrealistic, inhuman characters aren't my thing.