The Silent History

It makes sense to compare this book to [b:World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War 8908 World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War Max Brooks https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386328204s/8908.jpg 817]; they are similar, in that they both use testimonials to slowly paint a picture of an event.I just loved the concept of The Silent History - all of a sudden children are being born without the ability to comprehend or create speech. I do love a good psychological sci-fi that posits a situation and then just goes with it. It was fascinating how different characters interpreted being Silent in such different ways (as a disease or disability, as just a new variation, as a message, as a return to “real humanity”, etc.).The Silent community has many strong parallels with the Deaf community, especially when it comes to the fight between seeing it as a disorder and trying to fix it with medical technology, and not seeing it as a personal problem but as one with a society that tries to “fix” everyone to make us all the same instead of changing the environment around us to allow everyone to participate equally. It was interesting to read about the range of parental reactions to having Silent children, where some would immediately embrace it and attempt to learn the “face talking” language that Silents use with each other, some would hold hope that their child would be able to learn language someday and would spend all their money and time on speech therapy, some would encourage their children to make other Silent friends while others would prevent their children from seeing any other Silents, some immediately jumped on a new medical “cure” while others were horrified that they should be expected to change their children at all...etc.I didn't love all the characters, but I didn't really hate any of them either. I liked seeing the same event from different perspectives, it helped to empathize with each person. Everyone is trying to deal with this sudden and confusing situation as best they can, and we all have different coping mechanisms.So, I really liked this book. And it's cool that it's an app too, but I don't think I really missed out on anything by not owning any apple products. If you want, you can just read a chapter a day and you'll have the same experience, pretty much.