Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Keeping Secrets


The Price of Silence is the new novel by Camilla Trinchieri. It is an intensely suspenseful story masquerading as a women's literary novel. Emma Perotti teaches ESL in New York and encounters An-ling a young Chinese woman. An-ling is later found dead in her apartment, and Emma is arrested. Secrets are held by everyone in this book--Emma's family included--and in alternating chapters from all the characters' points of view, we eventually find out what happened to An-ling. It's a very smart book, not a typical whodunnit at all. The characters are well developed and three dimensional; no cookie cutters here. By the time you find out who is responsible for An-ling's death, you've seen it coming. But that doesn't make the ending any less emotional or effective.

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