Observations from the Balcony

How far will one man go to protect the secret of the woman he loves? How will holding on to the secret for so long affect him?

Normally the typical Carroll book is a kind of North American magical realism that is filtered through European sensabilities. Every Carrol book is unique, original and is guaranteed to surprise.

But in After Silence Carroll plays it tighter and hews much closer to realism in this uniqe and dark family drama. Jonathan Carrol is a great writer and one of my all-time favorites. I actually re-read Carroll’s entire catalogue last year and the unmitigated emotional power of this book really stood out.

I would even go so far as to say that it should be re-considered as a lost noir classic.

It also has one of my favorite openings of all time:

“How much does a life weigh? Is it the product of our positive or worthwhile acts, divided by the bad? Or is it only the human body itself, put on a scale - a two-hundred-pound life?

I hold a gun to my son’s head. He weighs about one hundred and thirty pounds, the gun no more than two. Another way of thinking about it: My son Lincoln’s life weighs only so much as this pistol in my hand. Or the bullet that will kill him? And after the shot will there be no weight?

He is smiling. I am terrified. I’ll pull the trigger and he will die, yet he’s smiling as if this fatal metal against his head is the finger of a loved one.

Who am I? How can I do this to my own son? Listen- ”

And from that opening a dark drama is told. This is a powerful book.