The Silence of the Choir
A Novel

Woooow. What an absolutely breathtaking book. It is a story about rampant xenophobia and what happens when it takes over a small town in Sicily. A group of refugees enter a Sicilian town to a mixed reception and the novel follows the growing tensions between the refugee community, those who are welc......more

The Most Secret Memory of Men is likely the best book I’ve read in 2024, therefore my expectations going into The Silence of the Choir were high. I quickly realized that I needed to temper expectations and acknowledge that this novel was written several years prior to MSMOM; though flashes of the br......more

3.5. this is a difficult book to review, in part bc i found it to be quite uneven. on one hand, some of this prose was the best that i’ve read from a book published in the 2010/20s. and i found some of the characters to be very nuanced and alive and i liked the surreal touch the whole book has. but......more

L'ambientazione siciliana mi ha molto colpito, perché è una terra ricca di contraddizioni, e vederle attraverso lo sguardo di uno scrittore francese è stato particolare. La magnifica descrizione delle dinamiche di un piccolo paesino, insieme alla critica ai gruppi di estrema destra e alla corruzione......more

7/10 A difficult book to rate. The writing´s very good and the "reflective" parts are brilliant,exploring weighty issues. The plot and characters,however, slide too often into cardboard characters, clichés, and several soapoperish twists (view spoiler)[ Sabrina´s love interest, Maurizio´s role in his death,the mut (hide spoiler)]......more