bookchickdi: The Silent Treatment

Showing posts with label The Silent Treatment. Show all posts

Friday, April 10, 2020

Friday 5ive- April 10, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week. We're going on four weeks since we have been sheltering-in-place, and we seem to have settled into a routine. I get up, make my husband breakfast, catch the first part of CBS This Morning, do laundry twice a week, take a Peleton spin class, eat my breakfast and then get to work on whatever project I have going. I check in with family and friends, and then read for awhile before starting dinner. I have cooked (or reheated leftovers) every night since March 14th. It's exhausting, am I right? On to the 5ive-

1) We live near four hospitals and every night at 7pm, people go out on their balconies and cheer for first responders, healthcare workers, and all essential workers (grocery store workers, pharmacy workers, transit workers, etc.) I video it and post it on my Facebook page every night. It's really great to see people coming together to do this, and here is one from this week.

2) Speaking of videos, my birthday was this week and since my kids couldn't be with me, they sent me birthday greetings from Brian Baumgartner, who played Kevin on The Office. I love that show, and just finished a book The Office-The Unofficial Best Comedy of the 2000s by Andy Greene, so this was extremely appropriate and made me laugh so much. What a thoughtful gift! You can get one too at Cameo.com

3) Recipes have been on my mind this week, and not only the ones I have cooked. My cousin and her friends shared a Quarantine Recipe Exchange, where people swapped easy recipes made with things you probably have in your home right now. I shared Spanish Rice, which my husband loves, and the link to the recipe from Robyn Stone on Add A Pinch is here.
Our nephew's girlfriend has been making her grandmother's recipes and posting the results on Facebook and Instagram for all of us to drool over. What a great idea! We're trying to convince her to put together a cookbook as all the women in the family enjoy cooking.

4) I've been watching two shows about people "breaking bad"- Better Call Saul's fifth season is on now on AMC on Monday nights, and for those of you who loved Breaking Bad, you know the character Saul Goodman, a lawyer for the drug dealers. The show gives us his journey from struggling lawyer to cartel lawyer, and this season is a key one for Saul.

Good Girls is back on NBC on Sunday nights, and this one is about three suburban Detroit women who in desperation rob a grocery store and end up stealing a drug dealer's money by mistake. Every decision they make just brings them into deeper trouble. I watch it and marvel at where they take the storyline. If you haven't watched this one, binge it on Netflix.

5) I finished Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman and it is fantastic. It's based on the life of the author's grandfather, who worked to keep Washington DC from taking away his tribe's land in North Dakota in 1953. The characters are so vivid, and the reader is immersed in the culture. I highly recommend this one.

I also started and finished Abby Greaves' debut novel The Silent Treatment. (My review is here.) It's about a long married couple whose husband stopped speaking to his wife for six months. When she becomes comatose after an intentional overdose, her narrates their love story and tries to explain why he was silent. It's heartbreaking and devastating.

I hope you all stay safe and well and home.

The Silent Treatment by Abbie Greaves

The Silent Treatment by Abbie Greaves
Published by William Morrow ISBN 9780062933843
Hardcover, $27.99, 290 pages

In Abbie Greaves's debut novel The Silent Treatment, Frank and Maggie, who have been married for over forty years, have not spoken in six months. Or rather, Frank has not spoken to Maggie for six months. When Maggie decides that she cannot take another moment of it, she overdoses on pills and ends up in a medically induced coma.

Frank is beside himself, and at the hospital a kindly nurse caring for Maggie tells him that the best thing he can do is to talk to Maggie. So Frank begins to recount their love story.

While out at bar celebrating with colleagues, Frank sees Maggie enter in a crowd of people. She enters "like a cyclone descending, all flailing limbs and air kisses, a flurry of hugs and exclamations and the sort of warmth everyone in the vicinity could feel." He was entranced.

Maggie was the complete opposite of Frank. He was shy and socially awkward. His colleagues convinced him to talk to Maggie, and while he screwed up his courage and did talk to her, he didn't ask her out.

By luck, he ended up at the doctor's office where Maggie worked as a nurse, and this time he didn't let the opportunity pass. He asked her out and she said yes. And so began the love story of Maggie and Frank.

They didn't have much money, but that didn't matter. They enjoyed each other's company and brought out the best in each other. One thing Frank struggled with was that he felt in times of distress, he didn't say the right thing, so to avoid saying the wrong thing, he just didn't say anything at all.

Maggie and Frank had their share of disappointments, like all couples. She had a miscarriage, and then struggled for years with infertility. When they finally had a daughter, Eleanor, they were over the moon. Ellie became the light of their lives.

The Silent Treatment is not only a story about a marriage, it is also a story about a family. Ellie changes their lives, and when she has problems they cannot fix, they each turn inward away from each other instead towards each other. We see Frank's point of view as he tells their love story, and we get Maggie's point of view in a diary she kept during the week before she attempted suicide.

Book clubs would have much to talk about with The Silent Treatment. You can dig deep into why Frank stopped talking, why Maggie didn't confront him sooner, and how important it is to communicate honestly with your significant other. It is a heartbreaking book, and the subject matter may be difficult for anyone who has dealt with addiction or mental illness in their own family.

Fans of Jojo Moyes Me Before You will want to read The Silent Treatment, and Moyes even has a quote on the cover of the book. If you like your fiction to go emotionally deep, this one is for you. I'll be looking forward to Abbie Greaves' next book.