Silencio: del monasterio a las prisiones [Paperback] Brox, Jane

by Jane Brox

The author of the “dazzling epic” (Time) Brilliant delivers an indelible view of the ways silence affects those who seek it and those who have it imposed upon them.

Through her original, intertwined histories of the penitentiary and the monastery, Jane Brox illuminates the many ways silence is far more complex than any absolute; how it has influenced ideas of the self, soul, and society. Brox traces its place as a transformative power in the monastic world from Medieval Europe to the very public life of twentieth century monk Thomas Merton, whose love for silence deepened even as he faced his obligation to speak out against war. This fascinating history of ideas also explores the influence the monastic cell had on one of society’s darkest experiments in Eastern State Penitentiary. Conceived of by one of the Founding Fathers and built on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the penitentiary’s early promulgators imagined redemption in imposed isolation, but they badly misapprehended silence’s dangers.

Finally, Brox’s rich exploration of silence’s complex and competing meanings leads us to imagine how we might navigate our own relationship with silence today, for the transformation it has always promised, in our own lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, Religion, Social Science

Paperback

First published January 15, 2019

About the author

JANE BROX is the author of Clearing Land, Five Thousand Days Like This One, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Here and Nowhere Else, which received the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. She lives in Maine"

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

In March of 2020, my life changed. Everyone's did, but this is the particular way in which mine did:
One day, I was planning for midterms, teaching my students in person, looking forward to Duke making a great run in the NCAA tournament, looking forward to a trip to Montreal with my sister and her husband, getting more students to tutor, and thinking about spring break. Then, suddenly, basketball was canceled, on-campus learning was canceled, the trip was canceled. I was teaching from home, mostly alone, isolated from my students, from my co-workers, from the campus I love, and unable to do what I love to do most--connect with my students. At least, that's how it felt. The world was quiet. Everybody was indoors, everybody was home, people were keeping their distance. Nobody wanted to hug anyone or give anyone a high-five. Standing close to someone was considered rude or even a threat. People weren't going out to eat, to watch movies, to bowl, to play pool. Some were even happy about the changes, claiming that their introversion had prepared them well for isolation. I know there were bigger changes, more drastic, life-altering events for those who became sick and for those who lost loved ones, for those who lost their jobs and their homes. I'm not by any means claiming that my experiences or changes were worse than anyone else's or even parallel anyone else's, but the way my life was affected was mostly by removing me from socialization and working directly with my students.
Weeks and weeks later, my sister told me that restaurants in a nearby location were opening for outdoor dining. I still remember the feeling as we drove to the restaurant, of seeing people out and about, of feeling like things were getting better. It felt freeing and hopeful, but it also felt strange, like we were doing something wrong, even as we wore our masks and socially distanced and sanitized.
Silence is important, even essential, to growth, to peace, to self-reflection and self-worth. Silence takes shapes and allows us to navigate our inner worlds, to understand nature and other humans, to find our faith or relocate it. But isolation is a different entity, and when silence is enforced rather than chosen, when it's accompanied by isolation, it can be blinding and deafening. It can be devastating.
Brox juxtaposes the various kinds of silence. She symbolizes chosen solitude and silence with Thomas Merton and his choice to enter a monastery. She discusses monasteries in general, focusing on a few select places, mostly Cistercian, and she also highlights Merton's experiences and his writings. She symbolizes enforced isolation and silence with Charles Williams, the first recorded prisoner at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, and with Eastern State itself, going back to Benjamin Rush's first proposing the idea of a penitentiary developed to encourage reform through silence. She discusses the early history of prisons, beginning with Newgate in London and moving from there to the punishments enforced in colonial America that were meant to shame lawbreakers and warn law-abiding citizens. She then moves into the more humane (arguably) way of punishing criminals and focuses on the development of Eastern State, contextualizing it and the philosophy behind it.
My favorite sections were about Merton and the monastic life and the very small section about women and silence. In that section, Brox focuses again on the oft-chosen but also forced silence of women who enter monasteries, but she also discusses how silence was imposed on women, who used to be punished for being "shrews" by being forced to wear through town muzzles that clamped down their tongues and tore into their upper palates. I wish that chapter were longer. But I thoroughly enjoyed the chapters on Williams and Eastern State as well.
I have to say that, altogether, this book was nothing like I expected. I didn't think there would be a focus on silence in a prison or in monasteries. I expected a much broader scope, like in Salt: A World History, but I loved the development of Brox's ideas. Her last official chapter before the "Coda" reflects on silence in modern life and how it doesn't really exist anymore unless we "make space for it." She discusses her own experience with an accidental foray into silence and how it effectively changed her mindscape and thus her life.
I come back to my story about the initial quarantine in March. There are passages in Brox's book in which Brox discusses the strange feelings prisoners had when emerging from their isolation and silence and reentering the world. It was familiar to me. Even now, with still having to work from home and many people being afraid or cautious about leaving their homes, with the threat of a nationwide quarantine looming over us in the States and many countries already experiencing their second and third (maybe even fourth) rounds of quarantine, I feel a heavy silence and solitude. They're not enforced, exactly, but they're not chosen either. I like to be alone. I enjoy my own thoughts, and I love times of reflection with God. I pray and think often, especially as a reader and a writer. I've always liked being alone and needed space if I'm too much in the presence of other people. But I've also always been a social creature. I like being around people, hearing them talk and laugh. I love and miss so deeply (that a knot is forming in my throat) being around my students. And so, I can identify oddly but deeply with the prisoners, the people forced into isolation and solitude. I thought reading The Plague was the closest I could get to seeing my current life in print, but passages in Brox's book hit pretty close to home as well.
Overall, I strongly recommend this book. It's very interesting and opened my mind to a different aspect of society that I don't really think about. Brox's writing is sensitive and poetic, and she clearly had a strong interest in and passion for her various focal points. Reading her book even led to my adding three Thomas Merton books to my TBR. I visited Philly for the first time this summer, and I want to go back. Brox's book also moved me to want to add a trip to Eastern State to my next excursion to Philly. So, it's a beautiful book, an entertaining one, but also an influential one.
Read with my dad, who said, "That was a good book. I liked it," when we finished.

[Jifu · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley)

"Silence" and "variety" are two concepts that aren't often thought of together, to put it generously. Jane Brox however shows quite clear that silence is nothing close to as simple as the overwhelming majority considers is. Silence is something that can be nurtured and utilized as an expression of faith, it can be experimented with (not very effectively) as a tool of reform, and it can wreck painful havoc as a method of punishment. In just these three areas, Brox explores and reveals a complex and surprisingly diverse world. And as one reads this eye-opening book in their very own form of silence, it will be hard to make it even halfway through before the author will successfully get you pondering about it, and whether it's something you could stand to make room for more of in your day to day life.

[David Wineberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do prisons and monasteries have in common? This is the unexpected and unusual premise of Jane Brox’s Silence. She recreates the history of prisons in England and America, and puts the reader in the place of a prisoner, to feel the punishment – endless years of it. Then she crosses over to Christian monasteries, showing why they exist at all, how they spread, and the extra severe burden placed on women in their own monasteries.

US prisons were designed to be hellish. Prisoners were hooded on their way in so they could not know where they were or the layout of the building. They stayed in their tiny cells, with little or no light, and nothing to read but the bible. Rehabilitation was a 20th century notion, all but abandoned today, as private sector prisons use inmates as slave labor, and have deals with their states to maintain them at least 90% full. So it is in the interest of both state and operator to keep the bodies coming back for more. Today, however, prisoners live together, eat together, and talk. Brox does not venture into this noisier state of affairs.

Instead, she focuses on Thomas Merton, a monk with a pencil and a typewriter. He wrote books on monastic life in the middle of the 20th century that not only became bestsellers, but were smuggled into prisons where inmates could put their own lives into perspective. This is a neat link of the two unlikely axes of this book. A disproportionate amount of Silence is handed over to him and his thoughts.

There is a large difference between the silence of prisons and that of monasteries. For all their silence, monasteries are communities of likeminded men, who choose to be there. They have daily routines that fill their lives. They sing hymns together. They just don’t chat. They signal a lot instead. That is very different from 19th century prisons, where men were sent to be punished. They were not allowed to make any noise, on pain of further punishment, had no community or even contact with other prisoners, and did not even know who their neighbors were. They were totally isolated. With little or nothing to do, they could and did go stir-crazy. Sending them back into complex and noisy society was an additional cruelty foisted upon them. That is the power of silence as punishment.

Brox does not delve much into the psyches of those who thrill to silence – those who go for weeks and months without uttering a word – and don’t even notice it. Think of lighthouse keepers, forest fire watchers, seal hunters, desert dwellers. As long as they are absorbed by their environment and their tasks within it, they are not just at peace, but flourish. She briefly mentions Thoreau, not much of a hermit, as he could still hear the churchbells from town.

Brox notes how a life of silence enhances the ability to hear and perceive. People hear details in a silent environment that are totally lost in a noisy one. When I first moved to New York City, I could discern more than twenty sources of sound just out the front door. Soon, it just became noise, and then, not even noticed. We lose a tremendous amount of processing in noise; there is much to be said for a life in a silent environment. On the other hand, forced, unwanted silence is killer for a social animal. Brox tries to bridge that gap, though she doesn’t lock it down.

David Wineberg

[Lorne Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

As other reviews note, this book examines not only self-imposed silence but solitary confinement and the use of silence in incarceration. I found it odd that the book cover / subtitle doesn't emphasize that at least 50% of the book is about methods of incarceration, which to me is a bit of a tangent away from the examination of quiet and silence.

[Marianne Frenhofer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is book is very different from what I expected: I was hoping to read something more intimate about silence. I was wrong, and have to admit this might have been my own fault - if I had only payed more attention to the subtitle “a Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of our Lives”, maybe I would have thought twice before buying it.

This book might surely be a good reference for a researcher, because of its anthropological point of view. But I think that even for an anthropology book, the subject of silence shouldn’t be so much technical... With all respect for researches in general, I believe that in order to write about silence, one have to be more subjective. Like a Werner Herzog documentary films, it should have its dose of poetry.

Another point is that most of the text is about silence as punishment. Divided in five parts, only two of them are not directly related to systems of incarceration and how silence might be imposed to prisioners as a way of punishing them. Even the parts which mention silence in other contexts relate the subject to power control and submission (especially when talking about repression against women).

I have to confess that I couldn’t read many chapters, because I’ve found it too boring. Or maybe I was pissed out because I’ve spent money on a purchase that wasn’t anything like the review and synopsis I’ve read...

Anyway, it’s not a bad book, but this was certainly not the right one for me.

[Yaz Arreola · Rating 5 out of 5]

“El silencio puede parecer un lujo. O el mundo tenso lo ha etiquetado como tal. Pero, por lo que sé de él, diría que el silencio es tan necesario como la libertad de expresión” - sin duda es una de las muchas frases con las que me quedo de este libro.

Considero que cada uno de nosotros tenemos una relación única con el silencio. Espero que al igual que yo busquemos activamente que sea bendición y no un castigo.

[Victoria Weinstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very upsetting and well-written history mostly on the uses of silence as mental torture, and for Unitarian Universalists who have been romanticizing Universalist prison "reformer" Benjamin Rush in your congregations and religious ed programs, you need to read this. Rush was not a reformer, he was a sadist.

That's all I'll drop on that for the moment.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unique, engulfing . . . unsettling. One of those books taken off the new non-fiction shelf at the library because it intrigued me. One of those books where you don’t know what you’re getting into. And then you find – thank you to Jane for this – that you’re in a “Bataan Death March” of a book. But I think that’s why it works. Silence as a chosen practice is brutal, and horrific when imposed. A book about two extremes of silence – freely chosen in the monastic life and imposed in a penitentiary – can’t be true to its subject without a grueling unremitting tone. It’s true that it’s not a social history (wish publishers would quit creating clickbait subtitles that are misleading). And it’s also true that Brox “stays silent” on aspects of silence that her book presents – with insistence. But I’m glad I took it off the non-fiction shelf.

[Kent Winward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book raises so many possibilities, especially the compare and contrast of the monastic and penal lives. But it remains oddly silent on adding actual understanding of the titular topic.

[MargaretDH · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard review to write - on the one hand, I like what Brox wrote about here: how silence is not the same as solitude, and how solitude is not the same as privacy, and that people have chosen silence or had silence imposed upon them in order to encourage spiritual and moral purification. But there is so much I wanted her to write about that she didn't! I think the title is part of the problem. It should really be Silence: an Examination of Separation from Society. Most of what Brox examines are the prisons that sought to use silence and isolation as way to reform their prisoners, and Christian religious orders that tightly controlled speech in order to foster closeness to God. There is just one chapter about the ways in which women have been historically silenced, and that could have been enough for a whole book! Brox is certainly thoughtful and insightful about what she does write about, but I wanted more.

In any case, I'm not sure who I'd recommend this to. It wasn't a difficult read, but it was certainly on a fairly niche topic, and I'm not sure Brox adequately contextualized some of her historical examinations. But, I do think the prison reforms of the 19th century are interesting, and if you are interested in that as well, this will let you dig into that.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing read. I picked it up partly because of the cover, I thought it was so pretty and yet haunting. The review I saw mentioned an "Eye of God" window in one of the prisons and that reminded me of the Kilmainham Gaol prison in Dublin Ireland that I visited last summer that had a similar "rehab" of prisoners: that they needed to know that God was watching them. In this book though it was also an attempt to so isolate a prisoner that they would hopefully turn to God and change their ways after release. I found it interesting her connection between prison life in the early centuries of Europe and America and monastic life in both areas as well. Silence. One by choice or calling, the other by consequence of actions. One that can offer relief from the chaos of the world with time to relect and meditate, the other that can change a human within days to pure madness. Thomas Merton is now on hold at the library for me, because the author enjoyed his writing so. Being a quiet person by nature, the subject of silence doesn't scare me, as long as its by choice.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a peculiar book.

It's well written, and carefully researched. Brox presents her readers with a nuanced exploration of the role of silence in both culture and the formation of the self. Her writing plays out against the reality of the loss of silence in our chattering, roaring, distracted culture. I picked it up because it seemed a natural follow-on to my recent reading of Barbara Brown Taylor's wonderful writings about darkness.

Though I liked much of it, the book also frustrates, just a little, because it seems not to go anywhere. We look at monastic life, and then we look at solitary confinement in prisons, and then back to monastic life, and then back to prisons, and on, and on. Silence is isolating and horrible, but it is necessary and centering, but it is oppressive and patriarchal, but it is beautiful, and back and forth. It was a little hard to know exactly what was being said. Perhaps the ambiguity of silence was the point, but it felt hard to stay engaged at times. .

A three point four.

[Georgie Melrose · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 36%

The first quarter of this book is just about a jail and the design of it, with context on the history. And that's fine -- but that's not why I picked up the book. I wanted more philosophy besides "if you're quiet, you think about God more - the Quakers and this sect of Monks".

In addition, the lack of recognition of the psychological impact solitary confinement has on people was just too blaring for me. Maybe Brox mentions it later, but I kept waiting for her to address it and she didn't.

In general I wish Brox had added some conceptual structuring. Why these examples? Why these moments? Why are you talking so much about architecture? This could have been a fascinating book if she knew the strength of her own insight and research better.

[Carlo Ruggiero · Rating 1 out of 5]

I cannot remember ever reading or listening to a book with such a negative portrayal of a subject. There was no mistake that the author views silence as a punishment. Description was very misleading or I would never have wasted my time. I got to disc six of eight and just could not force myself to go any further.

[Debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Narrated by Andrea Gallo and downloaded from the National Library for the Blind and Print Disabled's BARD app.

I probably wouldn't have searched for this book had it not appeared on the "titles newly added" list. The segments on Thomas Merton were especially interesting to me, as were those on penal isolation over the centuries.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

A star for the beautiful cover, and another for the occasionally lovely writing. But oh, what a Bataan Death March of a book!

[Elizabeth Mcnair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting way to tackle silence-through both prisons and monks. I found the book interesting, but I think might be hard for others. While this was the history of silence, I was looking more towards how to accomplish and integrate silence in the everyday world. Also-I felt with each setting-you could use silence for punishment and for benefit.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book at our library because I remembered that it had been reviewed in the NY Times Book Review. From their review (February 18 2019) - "Brox hunkers down in two institutions dominated by the absence of noise — prison and the monastery — and leaves us with a much more ambiguous sense of silence: oppressive under certain conditions, liberating under others. For her prison, she chooses Eastern State, opened in 1829 just outside Philadelphia as a new, idealistic sort of penitentiary dreamed up by Benjamin Rush, a reformer and friend of Benjamin Franklin, who wanted to deploy solitude as a means to redemption. Brox alternates sections on the prison’s history with ones on the medieval order of Cistercian monks, who structured their lives around silence, which they too saw as a means to redemption." How she has chosen to contrast silence - one enforced, the other chosen - is very interesting. I've stayed at a number of monasteries and have experienced the Great Silence after Compline until the next morning after the Holy Eucharist service at 9am. I know for some people the silence is DIFFICULT. For others, FREEING. Because I know the rhythm/schedule of the day, I find it freeing. Nice to eat breakfast in silence. "And while silence comprises a considerable part of the day, it is woven through with voices in chant and prayer. The communal observance of Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours - Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline - possess their own qualities, distinct from private prayers. Modern theologian and Priest Pius Parsch has remarked: In liturgical prayer...it is not primarily I who am praying, but the Church...The object of her prayer is broader, too: all the needs of God's kingdom here on earth. In liturgical prayer I feel more like a member of a great community, like a little leaf on the great living tree of the Church. I share her life and her problems." (p. 56) When the Psalms are chanted, there is an asterisks that marks the break/pause. "And so they proceed: voices, then silence, then completing voices. The brief silence in the middle of the line allows sound to reverberate: allows the community to listen, to anticipate, to wait. It is a pause for the beauty of the music, for the spirit, for the breath, for the mind." (p. 68) She introduces us to Thomas Merton. I've heard of him, read his quotes, but I have not read any of his books. "Years later, when he looked back at this time of casting about for his right place, he wrote: 'What I needed was the solitude to gaze of God more or less the way a plant spreads out its leaves in the sun. This meant that I needed a Rule that was almost entirely aimed at detaching me from the world and uniting me with God. not a Rule made to fit me to fight for God in the world. But I did not find out all that in one day." (p. 81) From his book, The Seven Story Mountain, which I decided to buy at Logos Bookstore in NYC. ..."As Merton himself knew, in spite of all his struggles with community, 'the only justification for a life of deliberate solitude is the conviction that it will help you to love not only God but also other men." (p. 88) From his book, New Seeds of Contemplation, p.52) And, now to silence inside prison. Charles Dickens visited Eastern State Prison during his American tour in 1842. He wrote, "'I am ...convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creatures,' Dickens writes concerning the silent and solitary sentences at Eastern State. 'I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore the more I denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.' Dickens was criticized for his empathic view of the inmates...." (p. 136) And she writes about women - the need to silence women. In prison - "But women's voices still remain suspect in the world of incarceration. Historian Cristina Rathbone, writing in 2005 about Massachusetts Correctional Institution Framingham, a prison for women, noted that while 'violence is the main concern in a male prison, at Framingham it is the creation of intimacy that most worries authorities. For this reason, the population is kept fluid. Women are not allowed, officially, to hold the same job for more than six months and roommates are routinely moved around.' It seems that authorities in the twenty-first century are as concerned about what might be shared in whispers as were the sheriffs in sixteenth-century England who forced the bridle upon women as punishment for gossiping. Keeping the population at Framingham fluid serves as its own kind of silencing." (p. 195) According to wikipedia - "MCI-Framingham prison is reported to be the most overcrowded in the state. Three-quarters of the women in this prison are mothers. The design capacity for MCI-Framingham is 452 inmates. It currently houses 656 female inmates at a 145% occupancy percentage." Back to Merton, "For Merton, the formality and structure of the monastic observances weren't unimportant--he taught them to the novices for two decades; explained their meaning; was invested in the Church and abided its authority, even when he chafed against it -- but he understood that the spiritual journey was beyond ritual, custom, architecture, or authority: 'What is essential in the monastic life is not embedded in buildings, is not embedded in clothing, is not necessarily embedded in a rule. It is concerned with this business of total inner transformation. All other things serve that end.' (p. 243) In prison, Joe Labriola, incarcerated at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution Shirley (near my hometown of Fitchburg, MA), he secretly/illegally reads Thomas Merton's Seeds of Contemplation. "Labriola recalled. 'I read it, I ate it. I wrote down lines page by page with the nub of a pencil. I shouted out passages to men in other cells through the barred windows.'...and with the help of a Merton scholar who visited the prison, he and a handful of other prisoners formed the forty-first chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society." (p. 244) And in the world outside of prison, "Even as contemporary life pushes silence to the corners, a longing for it persists, as does faith that if offers something the noise of the world cannot provide.....so some of us deliberately seek intervals of it --weeks, days, hours, even just a few minutes every morning." (p. 245) So, this was an interesting read. I know I was more interested/in-tune with learning about silences in the monastery. But still, I need to be awakened to the negative power of silence in prison. We/I do not hear the VOICES of those silenced or placed in solitary confinement in prison. The continuing need of prison reform/review.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author opens her book on silence by telling the story of the Eastern State Penitentiary, a prison conceived by Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, to punish convicted felons of crimes like those of the first prisoner, Charles Williams, a thief. She compares the prison model for silence to that of the monastic society in medieval Europe. She then explores the need for silence in the guise of a modern-day monk, Thomas Merton.

The author writes in a detached-sort of way never digging deeper than the surface on how silence affects those who either use it as a tool of retribution, are the recipients of that tool, or those who seek silence for reasons of their own like Thomas Merton. Nor does she take her research into the twenty-first century to explore how, or if, silence can be attained in our own busy lives.

The author’s sub-title for her book, “A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives,” is misleading. This is not a social history, rather it is a superficial comparison of a nineteenth century prison system and the monastic life of Thomas Merton.

This book is not for the reader who is seeking a well-thought-out and carefully conceived book on silence and how it affects us as social beings.

[Mirelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engrossing and descriptive, Jane Brox offers a look at the search and use of silence as a tool of power and control, but also as a path to inner life and renewal. Silence can cause fear, but also true appreciation and observation.

This thought-provoking book features Thomas Merton and Eastern State Penitentiary, as well as the idea that one needs to purposely create space in one’s life in order to find silence.

[Daniel W. Polk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the sections about Thomas Merton and Doris Grumbach. I'm a BIG fan of both. I found myself wanting to hear more about the author's time on Nantucket during the winter.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I made the hasty assumption that silence would be tackled in a way that addressed the advent of noisy things (machinery, cars, TVs blaring in waiting rooms). Or perhaps that focused on crowds: the silence of the countryside or the single life in contrast to the city and family life. But that is not at all the direction this author takes you.

The cover design reflects the path of the inquiry: beginning with criminal justice and the various ways folks have been punished (including with silence and isolation) and circling around to monastic life and the various ways folks have sought out peace and spiritual fulfillment (including with silence and isolation), and continuing to meander around both of those topics while also incorporating other threads. It was fascinating, at times puzzling, and completely unexpected.

Brox also manages to be completely silent on silence for large chunks of the narrative. At first this was disconcerting. How do you title your nonfiction book “silence” if you’re really writing mainly about monks and criminals? And somehow, in amongst discussions of ducking stools, prison labor, and dinner time in a monastery, you find yourself not only thinking about quiet silence, but more about the act of silencing someone else or the choice to break one’s own silence and speak up.

Many rabbit holes here. This approach to history reminds me of Sarah Vowell, who also wanders around, picking up seemingly unrelated things and making them connect. Brox seems a little more methodical in her wanderings and has a desert-dry sense of humor, as opposed to Vowell’s more scattered approach and wry but whimsical vibe.

[Julianna Ferreira · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really bothered me but at least it moved me which I think it important in literature. I had high hopes about discussing the concept of silence- as a Quaker with a deaf wife, silence is important to me and I struggle to understand it and its place in my day to day life. Unfortunately, the author spent most of the book discussing solitude and silence interchangeably, which I think really missed the point. She discusses again and again the fear and horror of forced solitude and silence in prison as punishment or reform, then silence and solitude as it pertains to religion which I would have liked to have had discussed more. I get the feeling the author is an east coast city girl, well educated, but she never really stepped out from behind her east coast urban perspective of silence and solitude as negative. At the end I was so disappointed to have her say she knew true solitude too because she spent a winter alone in a house in Nantucket writing. Really?! That’s the only exposure to solitude she has had as a lived experience to the topic of this book? Sigh. There is an important distinction between silence as a lack of hearing and as a lack of communication which she could have explored more as well. This just felt shallow and limited. Maybe a good start but she needs to go live in Alaska for a year or two alone, meet deaf people and research language deprivation for deaf children. Find the beauty and comfort in silence. The best part of the book was discussing the direct communication with God that Quakers find in silence. More of that please in the next book!

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so-so for two reasons, first is that it was not what I expected, and second it never really seemed to settle on the topic.

I was expecting a book about how silence is important in our lives, perhaps something meditative, but instead the book delved into unexpected aspects of silence. For instance, much of the book was about prison life and punishment through the ages. Why? Because Benjamin Rush decided a prison designed to incarcerate criminals should keep the prisoners in an absence of sound of all types - no himan interaction, no clocks, no contact with anyone in the prison, thereby allowing prisoners to meditate on the errors of their ways. This blossomed into much information about punishment and incarceration through the ages.

Interspersed was some information about practices of silence in monasteries. But not as much as I expected. This allowed the author to discuss Thomas Merton, who although a monk in a silent order, did not fit the topic. She pretty much just did a biography of him.

Brox never really settled on a topic and seemed to get lost in her research. It seemed to take forever to finish listening to this book.

[Bri Lamb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I was expecting something else from this book. The title was misleading to me. Instead of a defined timeline of silence throughout history, the author chose to focus mainly on silence in penitentiaries and monastic silence. I was disappointed I suppose, as I expected more breadth of knowledge and psychological detailing, whereas what the book really centered on was the architecture and history of a penitentiary and some monasteries. The info given, if the reader were indeed looking for something like that, was very in depth for what it was. Given the title, however, a lot of it felt like it went off in several unnecessary directions and on tangents that did not directly connect to the topic at hand.

[MountainAshleah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audio. I eagerly seek out and read every nonfiction and memoir about silence and solitude, and this is one of the strangest to date as far as its disjointed nature. The book title really strains at trying to create a thematic umbrella over this work that compares and contrasts prisons and prisoners with the monastic lives of men and women (and vice versa). For me, it's just too jarring a mind shift, especially on audio. There's a huge (and painfully obvious) gap between voluntary silence and solitude and involuntary silencing and isolation. The discussions of torture and cruelty among monks and the treatment of shunned women in society (ie, the scold's bridle, dunking in the lake, and all that) don't bridge the gap that the author should never have created in the first place.

[Richard Wolff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent reflection on the experience and impact of silence, using its manifestations in the penal and monastic settings as its focus. Brox focuses at length on each of these settings before skillfully interweaving the themes derived from one setting into a dialogue with those of the other. Often, these correlations are startling in the truths they reveal. Occasionally departing at some length for expository purposes from her announced focus on silence, her return to the central focus regularly arrives like a leitmotif, showing how the preceding particulars illumine understandings of silence.

[Art · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. Spotty. Overloaded with too much discussion about monks and monasteries. Too Catholic, too much Thomas Merton. And then there are the long sections about silence in prison. Not my book. A waste of time.

But there was this:

Imagine a quieter time, a medieval world when the monasteries rose. Before the ticking mechanical clocks arrived eight hundred years ago, people kept time with light, shadow, water and sand.

Church bells, introduced sixteen hundred years ago, broke the silence of ancient agricultural rhythms and began marking dawn, midday and dusk.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful, well-researched history of the use of silence in two main contexts - the use of silence and isolation as punishment for reformation in Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania and the seeking of quiet and solitude by monks through the ages, heavily relying on the writings of Thomas Merton. There are times she gets distracted from her main thesis by interesting tangents (like other forms of punishment) but this is an intelligent meditation on why people seek or suffer in silence.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully written book about the importance of silence in our individual lives and our culture. Silence is something that is a double-edged sword, it can be helpful and desired, yet it can also be painful and abusive. The contrast between the way silence is utilized and thought of is amazing. There is the silence that is self-chosen and the silence that is forced upon someone. Words are powerful but saying nothing and having complete silence is just as powerful and harmful.