The Washington Post review The Quality of Silence

News 12th February 2016

The Quality of Silence has received a fantastic review from The Washington Post, drawing on parallels with “The Revenant”. Read more below.

A mother and daughter’s risky quest for truth in Alaska in ‘Quality of Silence’

By Carol Memmott February 10
Much like “The Revenant” and “The Hateful Eight,” Rosamund Lupton’s suspense novel “The Quality of Silence” pits its characters against a heartlessly cruel Mother Nature. Set on Alaska’s James W. Dalton Highway, the notorious stretch of road made famous by the History Channel’s “Ice Road Truckers,” the book centers on a mother-daughter pair searching for the girl’s missing father. It’s the dead of winter and dark 24 hours a day. The cold is so “mean” it will bite at your face “like a half-starved animal.”Amid these stark conditions Yasmin Alfredson and her 10-year-old daughter, Ruby, barrel down the Dalton in a 40-ton 18-wheeler. They’re making a run from Fairbanks to the road’s stopping point at the town of Deadhorse, near the Arctic Ocean. Not only is it Yasmin’s first time driving a big rig, but a polar storm is imminent. Seasoned truckers are warning over the CB radio that the pair is headed into a hellscape that’s bound to kill them, but they won’t turn back.

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Never mind that an Alaska state trooper has told Yasmin that her husband, Matt, a wildlife filmmaker, was one of 24 people killed when a “catastrophic fire” engulfed a native village 35 miles from Deadwood, where he was working. The police have called off their search for survivors but Yasmin is convinced that Matt’s alive. She pays a trucker to drive them north, but bad luck strikes early on, and Yasmin finds herself behind the wheel. As if the weather isn’t enough of a threat, there’s also the menace of a tanker driver who seems to be following them.

About half of this teeth-chattering novel is narrated by the indomitable Ruby, who is profoundly deaf — and a model of girl power. She’s bullied at school for being different and on the outs with her only friend. Her parents are her anchor to self-esteem. Matt tells her to think about it this way: “It’s not that I’m deaf but I hear quietness.” She even has a Twitter account where she writes about words as only she can hear them. “WEIRD – Looks psychedelic; tastes dip-dab-sherbet-fizzy. “NOISE – Looks like flashing signs, neon-bright; feels like rubble falling; tastes like other people’s breathed-out air.” Her bravery, as the story unfolds, is enormous.

The quality of Ruby’s soundless world is juxtaposed against the deadly quiet of the Alaskan tundra. When the polar storm hits and when the sky and land seem to fuse into a single white entity, Yasmin pulls off the road to wait things out. The temperature outside the truck drops steadily and horrifyingly to minus-55 degrees, and the temperature in the truck cab to minus-4. The Alfredsons’ suffering seems unfathomable. Yet, like Hugh Glass in “The Revenant,” this mother-daughter team can’t be vanquished or stopped. In this tale, the deadly cold and treacherous road are no match for the fiery heat of enduring love.

Visit the article on The Washington Post website here.