Easy Silence
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Handles have one of those quiet, suburban marriages that has ticked along for decades without anything very momentous happening. William, a distinguished violinist and leader of the Elmtree Quartet, and Grace, a modest watercolorist, enjoy a serence, domestic routine where easy silence, an acceptance of each other's ways, is the norm. The two spend each day in their respective corners of the house--William upstairs practicing, and Grace downstairs working on her latest wildflower illustration--and they even take careful steps to prevent a chance encounter. For what do people who've been married that long say when they meet on the stairs? But just as quickly as their routine emerges, it is yanked away by the winds of change.
When the long-serving viola player resigns from William's quartet, the Elmtree hires Bonnie, a brilliant young player with perfect dimples and an ample bosom. In no time, William is smitten. Meanwhile, Grace's days have become enlivened by visits from Lucien, a troubled young man who lives down the street with the mothers he loathes. Though his presence unnerves Grace, he provides her days with a bittersweet frisson, and before long, she is captivated. As William and Grace secretly find their hearts tugged in opposite directions, the once-cozy couple moves closer to confrontation. But with the introduction of sudden menace, the story takes a darker turn--until real-life horror explodes and a murderous twist sends their world spinning.
From the acclaimed author of Land Girls and Wives of the Fishermen comes an elegant, if shocking, dissection of a middle-class marriage. In Easy Silence, Huth combines remarkable insight with biting wit to create a delicious black comedy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Suddenly William was able to contemplate the fact quite calmly: he would have to murder his wife." At the start of this unusual portrait of a British marriage, middle-aged William Handle is far from entertaining such wicked thoughts. For years, he has been happily married to Grace. Husband and wife each have their own satisfying occupations--William is the principal violinist of the Elmtree Quartet, and Grace is a painter--and they live comfortably in a suburb west of London. But then a new viola player--the attractive Bonnie Morse--joins William's previously all-male quartet, and William loses his head. Meanwhile, Grace is getting more and more caught up in the life of the Handles' unbalanced but charismatic young neighbor, Lucien, who visits in the mornings and rants about his domineering mother. As William's plans to rid himself of his wife progress, farce shifts into black comedy. But after a split that includes Lucien's betrayal, Grace and William reunite with a simplicity that belies the homicidal frisson previously in the air. Huth (Land Girls) shows how human destiny is shaped amid the tinkling of teacups, in this very British tale. Although Grace and William are not entirely rounded characters, they are engaging as something more than symbols of middle-class married malaise. Easy to read, but brittle around the edges, the novel gives a cool account of thwarted passion.
