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Kiedy Zapadła Cisza (2014)

by Jesse Ball(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Dom Wydawniczy PWN

review 1: Jesse Ball has put an intriguing spin on a murder-mystery story with Silence Once Begun. After a string of people vanish from the same Japanese village, a fictional caricature of the author travels as a journalist to investigate the man who has confessed to committing these mysterious crimes. Although the true identity and nature of the crimes comes out in the text within, the story of Oda Sotatsu, the man who wrongly confessed, is where the real mystery lies. After turning in his signed confession, Oda took a vow of silence and would not speak even to his own family or legal aids. Through a series of police interrogations, family interviews and a handful of photographs, Jesse Ball has uncovered how far this peculiar man would go to keep his word.
review 2: Thi... mores book wasn't exactly a case of style over substance, but it came dangerously close. The substance is a legal case of late 1970s Japan involving a man who offers a signed confession (and his complete silence) to a number of disappearances. The author as the interviewer follows the case through all those involved directly and indirectly with the suspect down to its inevitably tragic conclusion. The book is stylized as a series of interviews, along with photos and letters, and as such was a very quick read, although at times somewhat too metaphorical for my fairly linear brain. Or was it irony of it all more so than metaphor. The main thing that didn't work for me here was the explanation behind the confession, the logic of the mastermind seemed extremely flawed and as a result it fails to strike a chord with a reader just as it did in the story. The sacrifice to prove a point in so clumsy a manner just seems too idealistic, naïve, extremist, insane. The writing was very good and the plot and its construction showed originality (although it reminds me of something that I infuriatingly enough can't quite place), but as far as reading enjoyment goes, it didn't really sing for me. less

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