Kathleen Cecilia Nesbitt

Nesbitt’s Sentencing Silence is a long ode to pain. It is not the book to read if one wants to laugh – although the writer is adept at high-level sarcasm – and it is not about looking for a feel-good experience. But if one is willing to meet the writer on her terms and go along for the ride, it is definitely a book that will draw the reader in and fragments of it will stay with one forever.

Crafted like a triptych, the writer introduces three women: June, Reni, and Sandy. Each one’s journey differs and yet all three are tied in to the major theme of life and unfortunate circumstances. The reader drifts along inside the minds of these three women while, at the same time, viewing their exterior lives. Nesbitt has somehow achieved a multi-layered effect whereby the reader enters the scene, the analytical mind, and the subconscious - the latter which can move from dreamlike to nightmare over the course of just a few paragraphs.

There is some amazingly gorgeous writing in Sentencing Silence. Nesbitt does interior scenes especially well, almost like paintings by Vuillard. When the reader enters into these rooms, she or he also enters into the interior of the protagonist, sometimes in the most excruciating way. A young wife trapped in an unsuitable marriage, a call girl making a living but not seeming to enjoy it, and a mysterious lover of women who somehow blends into the persona of a depleted soul lying on a bed in a rehabilitation hospital, her body and life yearning to be put back together – these are the characters who will haunt the reader.

Nesbitt’s secondary characters are sharp, well-drawn, and memorable. Robert, the antique dealer; Kahlua, the streetwalker; Garvey, the homeless man, and Viola, the waitress at the diner are all very grounded characters. They seem real and sensible and help to keep Nesbitt’s main characters from totally falling down the well of grief and despair.

Exquisite sentences appear often in Nesbitt’s writing, and she seems to have a tight collar placed around her command of pain. She is leading it – and the reader – right to the edge of the cliff. One has to marvel at the writer’s ability to create a sense of terror. Nesbitt does terror well: fear, sadness, anguish, sorrow, confusion, desire, and nightmares are presented perfectly on a silver tray, exquisite in their tortured reality.

Nesbitt combines traditional and experimental writing in a fascinating way. Her style makes the book more artistic than it might have been in straight narrative form. Certain sections, particularly the one about Sandy remind one of the work of Marguerite Duras. This is absorbing, but gives the reader more challenges as one reads about ephemeral characters whose personalities and desires seem to inhabit more than one body.

The author has a message in Sentencing Silence but that may not become apparent until the very end. In the meantime, the rest of the book is mesmerizing. This is a book for true readers of literature. It is not your usual pull-off-the-shelf-for-a-quick-read novel. It takes dedication, perception, and the desire to inhabit “the other.”… (más)