Noise

Noise - Brett Garcia Rose I received a kindle copy of Noise by Brett Garcia Rose free from NetGalley for fair review. It's a brutal story of a deaf man, Leon, searching for his lost sister. I gave it almost five stars.

She had left a suicide note & he hadn't heard from her for many years, until a cryptic postcard arrives from New York City. He travels there from South Carolina in his big, ugly gray Dodge truck that is a beast when it needed to be.

"It's one of those urban designs that would never be included by engineers in the South, where the only people who walk are derelicts & runaway children that no one wants back." That is a description that sets the mood for the story.

New York City is a different world than the one he left behind. "Everyone hurrying somewhere, merging with one another on the cold, wet streets. Merging, & dismissing, as only urbanites can."

The first time I rode the subway in New York, I could relate to the following description. "No one on the train looks at one another. The lights flicker on & off. People wait blankly, as if the train is a time machine, as if the commute itself is some form of cyro-sleep, the trip slowly, unknowingly, draining their lives away."

In searching for his sister, he interacts with Sara, a dancer who had known Lily, his sister. & the following conversation takes place.

"Half the time,' she says, 'You're wrong pretty often then.'

'Not wrong', I say. 'Incorrect.'

'There's a diifference?' she asks.

'There's a difference.'"

I've always been a stickler for semantics. I could really relate to this discussion. I believe in using the correct words for the correct situation.

"In the digital world of the Internet, files are living, breathing, moving things, & they always leave a trail, & often fully archived copies of themselves. If you knew where to look." Leon explains to Detective Rico. He's letting the detective know that his past actions will have consequences.

Rastov, a Russian mobster is the next to the last man standing in Leon's search for Lily. "A small gray rat of a man, with a filthy elegance that makes him all the more despicable." I don't know about the elegance, but the man was utterly despicable in word & deed.

"There's a theory that the deaf never leave the womb. That there is a part of us that never comes out. That if we were ever able to hear the world, we would implode at the onslaught, that we exist our entire lives, insulated & isolated, as we were at the beginning." That is one of the best analogies I've read about deafness. I'm not deaf, but hearing impaired. There are times in a public setting that I feel overwhelmed, bombarded by the cacaphony of sounds.

"Noise" is a force with which to be reckoned. The book kept me up turning the pages & I read it in one day.

To purchase link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KYY4MM4?ie=UTF8&creativeASIN=B00KYY4MM4&linkCode=xm2&tag=injoslifethin-20