The Color of Silence The Color of Silence

The Color of Silence

    • 4.3 • 7 Ratings
    • $6.99
    • $6.99

Publisher Description

Alex is seventeen years old and she feels her life has come to an end. After being involved in an accident that killed her best friend, she doesn’t see why anyone would want her around and she refuses to talk. Ordered by a judge to do community service, she must spend time at a hospital with a girl named Joanie, who has minimal control of her body and no speech. Never having known another way of being, Joanie has an extraordinary internal life. She has been listening and watching as the world goes on around her, but Joanie is so full of words, thoughts and images that if she could ever figure out a way to let them loose, they would come swirling out in a torrent of syllables. She would fill every room with the colors of her dreams until the whole world became a rainbow of her making. Brought together by accident, Alex and Joanie have experienced the helplessness of silence. Their growing connection may lead them both to find the power of their voices.

  • GENRE
    Young Adult
    RELEASED
    2013
    March 11
    LANGUAGE
    EN
    English
    LENGTH
    280
    Pages
    PUBLISHER
    Second Story Press
    SELLER
    eBOUND Canada
    SIZE
    5
    MB

    Customer Reviews

    MsQBreads ,

    The Color of Silence

    Does silence have a colour? Or does silence have different colours? If I'd been asked those questions, I might have initially given silence the colour black - a void, without filling, a black hole of nothingness but the potential for sound. But Liane Shaw shows us that The Color of Silence will vary with the listener, here specifically two teens: one whose world had been filled with laughter and song, and then terror, before she chooses not to speak; and one whose silence is involuntary as a result of a medical condition which has denied her a voice since birth. Liane Shaw demonstrates that perspective is everything and nothing is the same for everyone.

    Alternating chapters between Alexandra and Joanie, and the reminiscences and present situations of both seventeen-year-old girls, Liane Shaw has the two connecting first due to a court order, definitely involuntarily, and then emotionally and naturally through silence. Alexandra Taylor is court-ordered to provide 200 hours of community service after an accident in a borrowed car leads to the death of her best friend, the popular Cali Prescott. While both Alex and Cali had loved singing, Cali's talent seemed more innate and now Alex can't even bear to speak. With her dad, Alex is somewhat more forthcoming, although accepting the guilt for Cali's death and recognizing the futility of her words in preventing it have numbed Alex's desire for verbal communication. Unfortunately, Joanie is the one whose brain doesn't relay messages to her body and suffers through repeated bouts of severe respiratory distress, necessary feeding tubes, a lack of muscle control (except for her eyes) and no voice. And yet she is the one who works tirelessly to understand Alex and to connect with her.

    Joanie, whose poor health and absence of real family would give her great reasons for bitterness, shows only acceptance and understanding, trying to learn more about Alex's reluctance to speak (she doesn't know anything about the court order) and still appreciating the silence she brings.

    Joanie's silence is coloured with the prisms of light, i.e., rainbows, that reflect from a stone necklace that has been hung above her hospital bed. The colours trigger her memories of happier times, staying at the group home, going out on school trips, and just being able to leave her hospital bed. So much of her day is quiet because of the dearth of visitors, essentially only her care staff. Until Alexandra. Joanie is delighted with Alex's visits, although Alex barely groans out a gasp or yes or no for her first visits. But Joanie takes it upon herself to get Alex speaking.

    Though the two girls seem to be voiceless, they are attentive to each other. For Alex, she is too distracted at the beginning to notice much about Joanie, spending much of her efforts anticipating others judging her for her past "crime" and her lack of skills. Similarly, Joanie worries about others' perceptions of her, even wishing that,

    When Joanie is given the opportunity to turn her eye movements into words using technology called the Eye Gaze (which they affectionately call the Wizard), the two girls are finally on the same page, with Alex realizing that she has something to offer Joanie i.e., the time and effort to ensure the Wizard is everything it can be. They are only limited by Joanie's health and consequently time to see what the Wizard can help her achieve.

    Liane Shaw ensures that the readers see that voicelessness can be selective or involuntary but the consequences similarly disheartening. For each girl there is a degree of shame (justified or not, as much shame is) but understanding, appreciation and effort can mitigate the effects, if only temporarily. The Color of Silence is not a plot-driven novel of adventure, intriguing subplots or parables to teach us how to live. It's a story of two characters and how they develop and evolve into better functioning individuals, finding the colour in their lives.

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