The Quality of Silence

Fiona Hardingham narrates mesmerizing descriptions of winter conditions near the Arctic Circle with care and precision. The Inuit tales within the larger story help to complete the depiction of the community of Anaktue, amplifying the vastness, darkness, and silence of the region where Yasmin's husband and 10-year-old Ruby's father, Matt, a wildlife photographer, has disappeared. Hardingham's delivery rigorously interprets Yasmin's grit as she drives a big rig on Alaska's ice road, a new and frightening experience for her and Ruby as they set out to find Matt. Hardingham's voice for Ruby, who is deaf, is terrific. Ruby's deafness adds to the novel's "quality of silence," and she is the real star of the story as she uses all her other senses to tell us how to experience more of what is around us. Listeners will be completely caught up in the atmosphere of this mystery. S.C.A. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Starred review from December 21, 2015
Astrophysicist Yasmin Alfredson, the heroine of this heart-stopping page-turner from bestseller Lupton (Afterwards), makes a desperate gamble to save her marriage and flies with her deaf 10-year-old daughter, Ruby, from their home in London to Alaska, where her husband, Matt, a wildlife filmmaker, has been shooting in a remote area north of the Arctic Circle. At the airport in Fairbanks, police tell a stunned Yasmin that Matt is dead, one of two dozen victims of a freakish fire that wiped out the Inuit hamlet where he was based. But in the absence of identifiable remains, she isn’t buying it, and even in the face of a looming winter storm, she resolves to get herself and Ruby, whom she has managed to keep somewhat shielded from the news (despite what the girl can glean from lip reading), the almost 500 miles on a two-lane ice road to hunt for her husband. Lupton limns a starkly beautiful story at once as expansive as the aurora borealis and as intimate as a mother and daughter finally learning to truly hear each another. Agent: Felicity Blunt, Curtis Brown.