Author: Brett
Garcia Rose
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 197
Originally published in: 2014
“The world is an ugly place, and I can tell you now, I fit in just fine.”
Lily is the only person Leon has ever
loved. The perfect big sister, she has always been nice to him ever since he
first set foot in America, and in her home. Ten years after she disappeared,
only leaving behind her a suicide note, Leon receives a postcard in her
hand-writing. A postcard that takes him into cold, noisy New York, looking for
his long-lost sister, hoping she is still alive.
However, what Leon finds there is so
unsettling that it can turn even the nicest person into a cold-blooded murderer.
Leon is not that nice anyway. He is also pretty experienced with fighting as he
had to defend himself on the streets of Nigeria since a very early age. One
more thing: this vengeful, frightening man, is also deaf.
Firstly, the story is pretty dark and
some very heavy themes are concerned. So, if you cannot stomach subjects such
as rape, human trafficking, and cold-blooded murders – this is not the book for
you. For the rest, however, this is a pretty exciting, fast-paced thriller that
tells a story of loss and vengeance.
A great thing about the book is that
it reads like an action movie, told by the main character. Leon describes all
his moves, thoughts and feelings in real-time as they happen – as action
unravels before his eyes, it unravels for the reader as well. So, the New York
we see is a cold, heartless, ruthless one, filled with empty souls and
desperation, it is “desolate, grey and
quite” and its people “nudged around
like house pets.” Not only is this not the glamourous city-that-never-sleeps
we are used to hearing about, but it is also the symbol of everything that is
wrong with Western society:
“Humanity in constant battle, all its inhabitants rushing toward some
invisible exit, never tiring of the trap. Cities are hell, and New York is the
Grand Dame of them all.”
To Leon, who grew up on the street of
Nigeria, urban life has nothing particularly tempting to offer him – on the
contrary, a place full of people, it proposes him only coldness, distance and
inhumanity instead of warmth and closeness: “everyone
hurrying somewhere, merging with one another on the cold wet streets. Merging,
and dismissing, as only urbanites can.”
Although this might not be a terribly
new concept, there is something else about it – the fact that Leon is deaf. So,
what Brett Garcia Rose does is selecting the familiar concept of the big city
as an emotionless, empty place, and taking it to the next level by adding a
deficit to his character – the type of deficit that puts a whole new filter on
the city. This is why to Leon, and subsequently to the reader, New York is quite. Leon tries to feel
the noise, the noise that he can very much see, but as much as he tries that is
something he could never do: “New York
City, dead of winter, everyone feeling punished by lives of their own making. I
try to see the noise.” Making Leon, this full of rage young man, deaf is a
brilliant decision in this context – he is not disabled in the true sense of
the word as he is strong, fast, skilful, and knows not only how to defend
himself, but above all how to attack. The brilliance is not in this. It is in
the great juxtaposition that derives from this fact – a deaf man on a killing
spree in one of the noisiest places on the planet. The uproar of the city is
completely muted, and instead there is silence through which you can see New
York for what it is. With the cloth of silence spreading above it, it is
nothing more than a graveyard of empty souls.
As I said, the novel reads like an
action thriller. That is, it has a bit of a “film script” feeling to it – Leon describes
everything he does in a pretty straight-forward manner making it extremely easy
not only to imagine, but to actually see
the whole scene. To make myself even clearer, here is an example: “Just as he’s entering the outer door to the
building, I plow into his midsection and push him face-first against a concrete
wall, hard enough to daze him. I yank his arm behind him and pull until he
stops struggling.”
To sum up, Noise makes for a very enjoyable read even though it touches on
quite dark matters. But if you do not mind getting your hands a bit dirty, you
should not have a problem with the explicit content. Very fast paced, never
dragging for too long, yet offering a good character development, this is a thriller
that is going to keep you interested. As for the rest of its plot, you will
have to read the book to find out as I do not want to spoil anything else.
