This Heavy Silence, A Novel of Loneliness and Lost Opportunity

When is strong too strong?  When does being self-sufficient become a cover for, a mask for intense loneliness, and, possibly, fear?   These are good questions to ask about the problem of loneliness.  Who is shy?  Who, instead of being shy suffers from existential loneliness?  Is it only a few people; the odd ones?  Is it we, ourselves?  How does our own loneliness affect others, especially children whose natural inclination to love and to help everyone might break through the walls loneliness builds? How does the lonely one cope with her loneliness?  In work?

“This Heavy Silence” by Nicole Mazzarella is a difficult book to read.  It bleeds like an open wound, and frustrates the reader who might want someone to help the wounded, to SEE the wound in the first place.  It frustrates because of all people in the story, the person who is wounded by loneliness seems the most blind to her loneliness.  Alone, she farms the land.   Strong, resilient, and deeply loyal, Dottie Connell farms her family’s three hundred acres in rural Ohio alone, having sacrificed love and family for land she does not own. A sudden, inexplicable event leaves the daughter of her childhood friend in her care. Pressured by her community to allow her former fiancée to raise the child, Dottie must face the past she has worked fifteen years to forget.  The resulting story explores the intricate and delicate nature of dealing with a foster child, the problems of loneliness and the existential difficulies of relationship that result from failing to provide a nurturing environment for a growing child

Spanning a decade, “This Heavy Silence” explores the power of the vows we make to others, and, more binding, those we make to ourselves. Evoking the hardship, spring-fed beauty, and the complexities of community in the rural Midwest, this beautifully observed novel leads us to question our ideas about motherhood, faith, and the debts we owe.

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