The Silence by Tim Lebbon - analysis and review

 

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The Silence is a horror novel that draws half its horror from the ways people can fall apart during times of crisis. Each chapter opens with fictional social media or internet quotations, spaces we all know can be a place of panic and fear at the best of times. This is a great device used by the author to explore this theme of how people hold up, or not, in adverse times.

Deep in an unexplored cave system, blind creatures unknown to humanity hunt in darkness. They hunt without sight, exploiting sound to catch prey. But, when the caves are opened and people come, these creatures are unleashed onto a world that might just be forever changed by their emergence.

With Ally, deaf for many years and used to a world of silence, and her family, we follow this story of survival in a world made unrecognisable.

The central theme of the book that particularly caught my interest was that of human reactions to tragic events. By embracing the theme of social media and the internet, as tools for communication and disseminating information, Lebbon did a good job of exploring the ways in which people can respond to fearful times. Indeed, a great deal of the horror in this novel is not in the behaviour of monstrous creatures, but in the monstrous and desperate things that people can do to each other. The book is at its best in those parts, casting an eye on how people will justify to themselves committing horrible acts.

I don't know what inspired Lebbon in his creation of these creatures, blind cave dwellers that hunt by sound, but they are solidly scary. We are an awfully noisy animal, us humans, with our music, our cars, our need to perform on some virtual platform, and, sometimes, our desire to just stand up and shout. In The Silence, in this world where people are forced into quiet, it is a stripped back world. A world where much is given up, but also a world where connections are brought back to those with whom we are closest.

This is a decent horror novel, with themes worthy of exploration.

You can purchase a copy of The Silence by Tim Lebbon here.

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