- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Granta Books; First Edition, Second Impression edition (1 Nov 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1847080421
- ISBN-13: 978-1847080424
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 149,620 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
A Book Of Silence
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'A Book of Silence grapples with ideas at the very heart of what it is to be human' -- The Times
'Her artful book ... demands to be taken on its own terms' --Independent
'Her artful book ... demands to be taken on its own terms' --Independent
Review
'Unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find'
'A brave, honest, fascinating book'
'A brave, honest, fascinating book'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
137 of 142 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book about silences,
By
This review is from: A Book of Silence (Hardcover)
This is a riveting and quirky book, beautifully written, entertaining and profound. Impossible to classify, it is part travelogue, part witty and devastatingly open autobiography, part review of the experiences of silence of people as diverse as early Christian desert hermits, 20th century yachtspeople and Buddhists.
Mid-life, Maitland chose to place silence at the centre of her life and she explores what this might mean for her in late 20th Century Britain. She addresses challenging issues, such as the fear of what might happen in silence, and practical issues such as earning her keep. To my mind, she doesn't always get it quite right - her fascinating discussion of voice hearing that sometimes happens in silence does not distinguish between hearing 'inner voices' of guidance and 'outer voices' made by the wind , for example. Her description of silent Quaker worship doesn't quite grasp that this is a listening silence, in which the worshippers' active 'listening towards God' is more important than any spoken word. But these are small points in a huge work, and I would thoroughly recommend this book as a good read for practitioners of silence and others alike. Maitland articulates beautifully much that is not spoken of in our society , including the importance for everyone of having enough silence in our lives. The book is is not an invitation to silence as such, but offers insights and many possible paths for readers to follow. I can think of several very different people for whom it would be a great present!
58 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The sound of silence,
By
This review is from: A Book of Silence (Hardcover)
In middle age, the feminist author, Sara Maitland, lives on her own for the first time, and surprises herself by falling in love with the vast silences of solitude. Over the subsequent decade, she sets out to explore her new love, spending time on her own in some of Britain's wild places. A Book of Silence is partly an account of her experiences of silence and partly a cultural history of silence.
In essence we have two books that are competing for our attention. Maitland's accounts of her own experiences are fine and moving, but she intersperses these with her sprawling discourse on the culture of silence. Maitland loves quiet, but gives her readers no peace for she is endlessly qualifying her own, often moving, experiences with those of others. There's nothing wrong with setting out to explore others' experiences of silence, but she's actually a not a great guide, seemingly including everything she happened upon in her research, when had she cut the book by 100 pages it would have been much better for it. What really frustrated me about A Book of Silence is that so many passages are exceptionally well written and Maitland's skills as a writer are abundantly obvious. She writes of her admiration for the mountaineer and author, Joe Simpson, and yet in many ways her accounts of the silences of Skye and Galloway are as evocative as Simpson's works, many of which are considered modern classics. What we want is more of this, more of the author, and less of rambling, sprawling pseudo-academic discourse on silence. Because she seems so preoccupied with others' accounts she also leaves the reader asking many questions: How did the break up of her marriage (which is skirted over) impact on her search for silence? What did her children make of her life choices? The problem with this sort of book is that you can't be selective over what you reveal to your reader: you either show them everything or nothing. This is, in many ways, a good book, but with more stringent editing and disciplined writing it could have been great.
56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book of Silence,
This review is from: A Book of Silence (Hardcover)
This was an utterly absorbing book. Thought-provoking and unique, I would recommend this to everyone. I picked it up in the bookshop by chance - I had never heard of Sara Maitland, but found her writing style entrancing. The ways in which she explored silence; in history, religion, literature and especially within her own life, were fascinating.
This book has charm. Give it a try.
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