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Award-winning novelist and cult favorite Graham Joyce transports readers to a mysterious world of isolation and fear with a hypnotically dark story about a young couple trapped by an avalanche in the remote French Pyrenees. . . a daring and powerful novel about love, loss, and rebirth.
In the French Pyrenees, a young married couple is buried under a flash avalanche while skiing. Miraculously, Jake and Zoe dig their way out from under the snow—only to discover the world they knew has been overtaken by an eerie and absolute silence. Their hotel is devoid of another living soul. Cell phones and land lines are cut off. An evacuation as sudden and thorough as this leaves Jake and Zoe to face a terrifying situation alone. They are trapped by the storm, completely isolated, with another catastrophic avalanche threatening to bury them alive . . . again. And as the couple begin to witness unsettling events neither one can ignore, they are forced to confront a frightening truth about the silent land they now inhabit.
Award-winning author Graham Joyce has written a mysterious masterpiece, a tour de force that will thrill fans of Peter Straub and the hit television show Lost.
Two young lovers find themselves utterly alone after a skiing accident in the French Alps.
Best known in his native England for erudite fantasy, Joyce (How to Make Friends with Demons, 2009, etc.) spins a story of devotion that is equal parts romance and nightmare. It begins, appropriately enough, in the bitter cold of the mountains near Chamonix, France, and the chill never really goes away throughout the course of the novel. A British married couple, Jake and Zoe, are enjoying the thrills and arresting scenery of one of the world's great ski runs. "If there are few moments in life that come as clear and as pure as ice, when the mountain breathed back at her, Zoe knew she had trapped one such moment and it could never be taken away," Joyce writes. "Everywhere was snow and silence. Snow and silence; the complete arrest of life; a rehearsal for and a pre-echo of death." It's a crucial moment in Zoe's life—perhaps the most important of her entire life, as half the mountain soon comes hurtling down upon them both. Fortunately, Zoe is trapped in a lucky pocket of air and Jake manages to free her from her precarious position upside-down. But as the two lovers make their way back to civilization, they're startled to find that they seem to be the only ones left. All other human beings seem to have been evacuated, and no forms of communication work. The absence of company isn't the only odd occurrence, either. As the mountain threatens to bury them once more, the lovers enter a fascinating dialogue about what lies between them. "If there is any sense to marriage at all, it's so that I take your thorns and you sometimes take mine," says Jake.
An affecting story of soul mates and the elements that bind them together.
Two young lovers find themselves utterly alone after a skiing accident in the French Alps.
Best known in his native England for erudite fantasy, Joyce (How to Make Friends with Demons, 2009, etc.) spins a story of devotion that is equal parts romance and nightmare. It begins, appropriately enough, in the bitter cold of the mountains near Chamonix, France, and the chill never really goes away throughout the course of the novel. A British married couple, Jake and Zoe, are enjoying the thrills and arresting scenery of one of the world's great ski runs. "If there are few moments in life that come as clear and as pure as ice, when the mountain breathed back at her, Zoe knew she had trapped one such moment and it could never be taken away," Joyce writes. "Everywhere was snow and silence. Snow and silence; the complete arrest of life; a rehearsal for and a pre-echo of death." It's a crucial moment in Zoe's life—perhaps the most important of her entire life, as half the mountain soon comes hurtling down upon them both. Fortunately, Zoe is trapped in a lucky pocket of air and Jake manages to free her from her precarious position upside-down. But as the two lovers make their way back to civilization, they're startled to find that they seem to be the only ones left. All other human beings seem to have been evacuated, and no forms of communication work. The absence of company isn't the only odd occurrence, either. As the mountain threatens to bury them once more, the lovers enter a fascinating dialogue about what lies between them. "If there is any sense to marriage at all, it's so that I take your thorns and you sometimes take mine," says Jake.
An affecting story of soul mates and the elements that bind them together.
Two young lovers find themselves utterly alone after a skiing accident in the French Alps.
Best known in his native England for erudite fantasy, Joyce (How to Make Friends with Demons, 2009, etc.) spins a story of devotion that is equal parts romance and nightmare. It begins, appropriately enough, in the bitter cold of the mountains near Chamonix, France, and the chill never really goes away throughout the course of the novel. A British married couple, Jake and Zoe, are enjoying the thrills and arresting scenery of one of the world's great ski runs. "If there are few moments in life that come as clear and as pure as ice, when the mountain breathed back at her, Zoe knew she had trapped one such moment and it could never be taken away," Joyce writes. "Everywhere was snow and silence. Snow and silence; the complete arrest of life; a rehearsal for and a pre-echo of death." It's a crucial moment in Zoe's life—perhaps the most important of her entire life, as half the mountain soon comes hurtling down upon them both. Fortunately, Zoe is trapped in a lucky pocket of air and Jake manages to free her from her precarious position upside-down. But as the two lovers make their way back to civilization, they're startled to find that they seem to be the only ones left. All other human beings seem to have been evacuated, and no forms of communication work. The absence of company isn't the only odd occurrence, either. As the mountain threatens to bury them once more, the lovers enter a fascinating dialogue about what lies between them. "If there is any sense to marriage at all, it's so that I take your thorns and you sometimes take mine," says Jake.
An affecting story of soul mates and the elements that bind them together.
Two young lovers find themselves utterly alone after a skiing accident in the French Alps.
Best known in his native England for erudite fantasy, Joyce (How to Make Friends with Demons, 2009, etc.) spins a story of devotion that is equal parts romance and nightmare. It begins, appropriately enough, in the bitter cold of the mountains near Chamonix, France, and the chill never really goes away throughout the course of the novel. A British married couple, Jake and Zoe, are enjoying the thrills and arresting scenery of one of the world's great ski runs. "If there are few moments in life that come as clear and as pure as ice, when the mountain breathed back at her, Zoe knew she had trapped one such moment and it could never be taken away," Joyce writes. "Everywhere was snow and silence. Snow and silence; the complete arrest of life; a rehearsal for and a pre-echo of death." It's a crucial moment in Zoe's life—perhaps the most important of her entire life, as half the mountain soon comes hurtling down upon them both. Fortunately, Zoe is trapped in a lucky pocket of air and Jake manages to free her from her precarious position upside-down. But as the two lovers make their way back to civilization, they're startled to find that they seem to be the only ones left. All other human beings seem to have been evacuated, and no forms of communication work. The absence of company isn't the only odd occurrence, either. As the mountain threatens to bury them once more, the lovers enter a fascinating dialogue about what lies between them. "If there is any sense to marriage at all, it's so that I take your thorns and you sometimes take mine," says Jake.
An affecting story of soul mates and the elements that bind them together.
Two young lovers find themselves utterly alone after a skiing accident in the French Alps.
Best known in his native England for erudite fantasy, Joyce (How to Make Friends with Demons, 2009, etc.) spins a story of devotion that is equal parts romance and nightmare. It begins, appropriately enough, in the bitter cold of the mountains near Chamonix, France, and the chill never really goes away throughout the course of the novel. A British married couple, Jake and Zoe, are enjoying the thrills and arresting scenery of one of the world's great ski runs. "If there are few moments in life that come as clear and as pure as ice, when the mountain breathed back at her, Zoe knew she had trapped one such moment and it could never be taken away," Joyce writes. "Everywhere was snow and silence. Snow and silence; the complete arrest of life; a rehearsal for and a pre-echo of death." It's a crucial moment in Zoe's life—perhaps the most important of her entire life, as half the mountain soon comes hurtling down upon them both. Fortunately, Zoe is trapped in a lucky pocket of air and Jake manages to free her from her precarious position upside-down. But as the two lovers make their way back to civilization, they're startled to find that they seem to be the only ones left. All other human beings seem to have been evacuated, and no forms of communication work. The absence of company isn't the only odd occurrence, either. As the mountain threatens to bury them once more, the lovers enter a fascinating dialogue about what lies between them. "If there is any sense to marriage at all, it's so that I take your thorns and you sometimes take mine," says Jake.
An affecting story of soul mates and the elements that bind them together.
one
It was snowing again. Gentle six-pointed flakes from a picture book, settling on her jacket sleeve. The mountain air prickled with ice and the savor of pine resin. Zoe pulled the air into her lungs, feeling the cracking cold of it before letting go. And when the mountain peak seemed to nod and sigh back at her, she almost thought she could die in that place, and happily.
If there are few moments in life that come as clear and as pure as ice, when the mountain breathed back at her, Zoe knew she had trapped one such moment and it could never be taken away. Everywhere was snow and silence. Snow and silence; the complete arrest of life; a rehearsal for and a pre-echo of death.
But her breath was warm and it said no to any premature thought of death. She pointed her skis down the hill. The tips of her skis looked like weird talons of brilliant red and gold in the powder snow as she waited, ready to swoop. I am alive. I am an eagle. Nearly two miles below lay the dark outline of Saint-Bernard-en-Haut, their Pyrenean resort village; across to the west, the irregular humps and horns of the mountain range. The sun was up now; in a few minutes there would be more skiers to break the eerie morning spell. But right now they had the powder and the morning entirely to themselves.
There was a whisper behind her. It was the effortless track of Jake’s skis as he came over the ridge and caught up with her.
He cruised to an elegant stop beside her. In contrast to her fashionable ski suit of lilac and white he wore black, and the morning sun burst on his bulbous black sunglasses in an iridescent flare. He stood still, sharing the moment with her. She fancied she could see his breath rising from him like a faint oyster-colored mist. He took off his sunglasses and blinked back at her. Jake had close-cropped black hair and baby-blue peepers that she’d fallen in love with instantly, even if his large ears had taken her a little longer. A single, enormous snowflake floated onto his eyelashes.
Jake fractured the silence with a whoop of pure pleasure. “Whooo-hooooo!!!!” He held his ski poles aloft and offered his dancing behind to the mountain. The sound of his shriek echoed around the crags, a celebration and a violation of nature all at the same time.
“You shouldn’t do that. You don’t show your ass to the mountain,” Zoe said.
“And why not? I like my ass.”
“I don’t know why,” she said playfully. “You just don’t.”
“Couldn’t help myself. This is perfection.”
It was. It was flawless. Immaculate, shrink-wrapped perfection on sticks.
“You ready to go?” she asked.
“Yep. Let’s do it.”
Zoe was the more accomplished skier of the two. Jake could be faster, but in a reckless way—skiing right at the razor edge of his ability. She could always thrash him over a distance. To ski down to the village without a pause would take minutes. An hour and a half to get up on the combination of chair- and drag lifts, and fifteen minutes to get down. They’d gotten up early to beat the vacationing hordes for this first run of the morning. Because this—the tranquillity, the silence, the undisturbed powder, and the eerie feeling of proximity to an eagle’s flight—was what it was all about.
Jake hit the west side of the steep but broad slope and she took the east, carving matching parallel tracks through the fresh snow. Her skis whispered to the powder in thrilling intimacy as she plunged down the slope. Just the sound coming from her own skis was like having some creature or supernatural being racing behind her, trying to speak a story into her ear.
But at the edge of the slope, near the curtain of trees, she felt a small slab of snow slip from underneath her. It was like she’d been bucked, so she took the fall line to recover her balance. Before she’d dropped three hundred meters the whisper of her skis was displaced by a rumble.
Zoe saw at the periphery of her vision that Jake had come to a halt at the side of the trail and was looking back up the slope. Irritated by the false start they’d made, she etched a few turns before skidding to a halt and turning to look back at her husband. The rumble became louder. There was a pillar of what looked like gray smoke unfurling in silky banners at the head of the slope, like the heraldry of snow armies. It was beautiful. It made her smile.
Then her smile iced over. Jake was speeding straight toward her like a dart. His face was rubberized and he mouthed something as he flew at her.
“Get to the side! To the side!”
She knew now that it was an avalanche. Jake slowed, batting at her with his ski pole. “Get into the trees! Hang on to a tree!”
The rumbling had become a roaring in her ears, drowning Jake’s words. She pushed herself down the fall line, scrambling for traction, trying to accelerate away from the roaring cloud breaking behind her like a tsunami. Jagged black cracks appeared in the snow in front of her. She angled her skis toward the side of the slope, heading for the trees, but it was too late. She saw Jake’s black suit go bundling past her like clothes in a dryer as he was turned by the great mass of smoke and snow. Then she too was punched off her feet and carried through the air, twisting, spinning, turning in the whiteout. She remembered something about spreading her arms around her head. For a few moments it was like being agitated inside a barrel, turned head over heels a few times, until at last she was dumped heavily in a rib-cracking fall. Then there came a chattering noise, like the amplified jaws of a million termites chewing on wood. The noise itself filled her ears and muffled everything, and then there was silence, and the total whiteness faded to gray, and then to black.
Total silence, total darkness.
She tried to move but couldn’t. Then she felt herself choking, because her mouth and her nostrils were packed with snow. She hawked some snow out of her throat. She felt the snow trickling cold at the back of her nasal passage. She coughed again and was able to gasp a lungful of air.
She had expected to come around in the whiteness of snow, but everything was black. She could breathe, but could barely move. She flexed her fingers inside her leather ski gloves. There was micro-movement. She sensed her hands were locked in position about a foot in front of her face. Her fingers were splayed wide inside the gloves. She tried to wriggle her fingers but nothing would move beyond that micro-flexing inside the glove. She stuck out her tongue and felt cold air.
Zoe heaved her body with no result, and instantly descended into a panic in which she was hyperventilating and feeling the booming of her own heart. Then it occurred to her that she might have only a pocket of trapped air to depend on, and so she slowed her breathing down. She told herself to be calm.
You’re in a snow tomb, be calm.
She breathed gently. Her heart stopped banging.
A snow tomb? You think that’s good?
There was almost a split inside herself as the part of her that wanted to succumb to panic argued with the side that knew if she wanted to survive she should stay composed.
Are you calm now? Are you? Are you? Right, when you are calm, call for your husband. He will come.
“Jake!”
She shouted his name, twice. Her voice sounded alien, distant, muffled, like something down a poor telephone line. She figured that her ears were plugged tight with snow.
She flexed her fingers again and still nothing gave way. She tried every joint, like a warm-up exercise in the gymnasium, starting with her toes, moving on to her ankles and her knees, hips, elbows, shoulders. There was no relief. The snow had packed her hard.
There was a tiny movement at her neck. That and the clear space in front of her mouth made her think that her instinct to fold her arms in front of her face had saved her thus far. She figured that she’d made an air pocket.
Call him again. He will come.
“Jake!”
You’re going to die. In a snow tomb.
She didn’t even know which country she was going to die in. They were right on the mountain border between France and Spain and the local people spoke a language that belonged to neither. She remembered that the Pyrenees were named for a tomb by the ancient Greeks.
No, you’re not in a tomb. You’re going to get out. Call him again.
Instead of calling again she tried to move the fingers of her left hand, one by one. Her thumb and forefinger were paralyzed, as was her middle finger, but as she pressed with her ring finger she sensed a minute crumbling and a tiny movement in one fingertip. Something infinitesimal gave way, and she was able to retract her finger perhaps a centimeter. The movement was matched by a painful strontium flare at the back of her retinas. Then a rainbow of sparks. Then blackness again.
But the message of tiny movement flew from the nerves in her finger to quicken her heartbeat.
Calm. Calm.
She continued to work her ring finger and after a while she found she could move it against her middle finger in a scissor motion. She exercised this scissor movement between her wedding finger and her middle finger. That’s right; you’re cutting your way out. Snip snip snip. Good girl. Cutting yourself free.
She had no idea how long she would be able to breathe, how much air she had. She tried to be economical with her breathing, keeping it shallow, sipping at the air. Her head was banging with pain.
She continued to try to scissor away at the snow around her fingers until the muscles in her fingers cramped. She rested them, flexed them, and began again. Snip snip snip. Good girl.
And with no prospect of movement, something suddenly fell away and her other fingers became free, until she was able to flex all of them, back and forth. Then she felt her moving fingers brushing the side of her face.
Now she made tiny karate-chopping motions with the upper digits of her newly flexible fingers, trying to find her other hand, hoping it had also come to rest close to her face. She was able to extend into and retract from the small space she had made. At last the free hand made contact with the other one. She worked away until she was able to lay the palm of her free hand over the back of the other. Then she pushed back into the snow, full force. Her first guess had been about right. She’d cradled a small pocket of air in front of her. She still had no idea how long this air would last. A minute? Three minutes? Ten minutes?
Don’t think about that. Good girl.
She tried to wriggle her hand out of the glove, knowing her fingernails would make the best tools for scraping her way out. But the gloves were strapped tight at the wrist to prevent the entry of snow. In the immovable dark she tried to loosen the right wrist strap, but the gloved fingers weren’t sensitive enough to allow her to grab it.
Perhaps Jake would come. Unless he too was trapped. Perhaps someone else would come. Perhaps they had helicopters circling overhead even as she thought these things. But no one else had been on the slope. It was likely that if the avalanche had been quite small no one would even know that it had happened.
Tomb. Greeks. Pyre means fire. You know. You know. Pyrenees. Shut up shut up.
“Jake!”
Her voice sounded a little louder in her own ears this time; but it also sounded helpless.
She tried again to grab at her wrist strap in the blackness. She heard the sound of Velcro parting, and the strap loosened. Grabbing the tip of her right glove with her left hand she managed to inch it off. There was nowhere for the glove to go: the thing was scratching her face, but she released it anyway and began to scrape with her fingernails at the snow just above her head.
Her breathing was coming shorter now. She was scratching at the packed snow but making no progress. The snow came free but didn’t move. It had nowhere to go. She scratched harder.
She coughed again. There was something trickling at the back of her throat, making her cough. Then she stopped scratching and focused on the trickling. The fluid, melted snow or saliva or whatever it was, was running from her nose into her throat. Instead of snot falling from her nose it was running backward. She had a sudden, panicked realization.
You are upside down.
She knew now with absolute certainty that she had been buried upside down and vertically. Her feet were nearest to the surface of the snow, not her head. This meant that by scratching on the snow she’d been digging down, deeper into the snow, not up and out. That was why the snow wasn’t flaking free. She’d been digging the wrong way.
She tried flexing her toe inside her boot. It moved a fraction, but the snow around her leg was packed too hard to let her move her leg. She inched her ungloved hand to her neck and found she could reach her hand through the snow to her chest. By scratching she could push her hand to her hip, and the snow fell in clumps toward her face. Then her hand hit a solid object.
It was her ski pole.
Excerpted from The Silent Land by Graham Joyce Copyright © 2011 by Graham Joyce. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
English husband and wife Jake and Zoe take a ski vacation to the French Alps and. as the story opens, they have been buried by an avalanche. They manage to dig themselves out and head straight back to their hotel where they are surprised to find everyone gone. Is it possible all the inhabitants of the town were evacuated, leaving them behind? Will someone come back to get them?
As time goes on, odd things begin to happen—cell phones that don’t work the way one would expect, cars that will only go so far, food that doesn’t seem to spoil. Is it possible that something far more sinister is going on?
The Silent Land is an hypnotic story with a distinctively creepy feel to it and narrator John Lee has the ideal voice for it. In the end, each reader/listener must decide whether the truth here is devastatingly sad or unutterably romantic. In the end, although I enjoyed the story, I felt it was a bit thin for its length and would work better as a short story.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 27, 2011
Ok story. Could have been wrapped up in 50 pages
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This book was pretty good, thought it dragged on for longer than it had to. You could guess where this goes and I really thought the book would have been way better if they created a different reason for why they were stranded. But it was a quick easy read.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 12, 2011
The Silent Land is one of the few books I've read in its entirety in one sitting. Stirring up a number of emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anxiety -- to name a few) Joyce does an amazing job at bringing you into the story. Character development is phenomenal. I wanted more. Should be on everyone's short list.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I really enjoyed the mystery of this book. Be careful of reading reviews...will likely give too much away. If you like post apocalyptic books, this one might be for you. My only regret is that it's a quick read.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This book sounded so good, and the first couple chapters were really good. The detail of the avalanche seemed realistic to me, and I found myself wondering what I would do with my freedom. However, the repetion of the testing, waking up, food descriptions and more got a little boring. I saw the ending coming a mile away, but it was a solid read, but one I won't pick up again.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.On a skiing vacation in the French Alps, a young married couple, Jake and Zoe, are buried under an avalanche. As they finally dig their way out of the snow they find themselves totally alone in a changed and silent world.
Nothing is the same as before; even the concept of time seems to have been altered in this new world. Their concern mounts as their isolation increases and with it their fears of another avalanche. No matter how many times they try to leave the resort, they always wind up back in the same place, at the same hotel.
Not similar but with the same overwhelming feeling of desolation as THE ROAD by Cormack McCarthy, this is a dark and frightening novel from cult favorite Graham Joyce. Although it dragged a bit in the middle, I thoroughly enjoyed reading THE SILENT LAND and look forward to reading other books by this award winning author. Lynn Kimmerle
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Posted September 3, 2012
I read this book as I had just finished Joyce's "Some Kind of Fairy Tale" which I loved. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was disappointed when it ended. I've been recommending this book to all my friends at work too. Graham Joyce is an exceptional and brilliant writer. I can't wait to read all of his other books.
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Posted August 15, 2011
Not that thrilling or suspenseful.
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Posted May 29, 2011
Reminescent of Stephen King.
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Posted May 21, 2011
Loved it! Love and the supernatural intertwine. Rich with detail it reads like watching a movie.
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Posted May 20, 2011
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Overview
Award-winning novelist and cult favorite Graham Joyce transports readers to a mysterious world of isolation and fear with a hypnotically dark story about a young couple trapped by an avalanche in the remote French Pyrenees. . . a daring and powerful novel about love, loss, and rebirth.
In the French Pyrenees, a young married couple is buried under a flash avalanche while skiing. Miraculously, Jake and Zoe dig their way out from under the snow—only to discover the world they knew...