The Silence Room — Sean O'Brien

Chain-smoking alcoholics, warring academics, gothic stalkers, and aspiring writers are just some of the visitors that browse the mysterious library at the heart of this sinister novel. Idlers and idolizers alike can be referenced, in body or in text, among the crepuscular alcoves and dim staircases of this seemingly unassuming building. The secret to a family curse, a dog-eared first edition of Wallace Stevens Harmonium, the gruesome fate of a feminist literary theoristall are available to simply take down from the shelf. Moving between genres, ranging from gothic horror to English pastoral, from critical theory to Cold War noir, this riveting and voracious story-within-stories crescendos the turbulent voices of culture to an effect equally maddening and exalting.

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