Silences, or a Woman's Life

A woman falls into a coma. Perhaps she's going to die. Becoming the sleeper's shadow, the woman's daughter will accompany her mother through six weeks of agony, bearing witness to the prolonged death imposed upon her by the monstrous machine of modern medicine. During this final voyage through the fog, the narrator attempts to recover the vivacious woman she knew before this illness: the mad lover, the romantic spouse, the musician who sacrificed her dreams to the reality of life with her husband. By assembling her memories of the dying woman, gluing together scraps of recollections like puzzle pieces, Marie Chaix reconstructs the portrait of a woman who she deeply loved--a blurred silhouette forever fixed in that "museum of dust" where each life ends.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 01/03/2012
ISBN: 9781564787958
Pages: 180
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.40w x 0.60d

Review Citations: New Yorker (The) 01/21/2013 pg. 73
Library Journal 02/01/2013 pg. 59