![]() ![]() Ben himself, taught to eschew all personal expression, tries to present a strictly utilitarian narrative of his upbringing-weaving in a history of the Silentist movement, a disquisition on female names, and a manual of Silentist behavior-and yet cannot help expressing the distress he feels in the smothering grasp of Jane Dark and her minions. Ben Marcus, as the young protagonist is called, is made to swim in a "learning pond," drink "behavior water," follow the "Thompson Food Scheme" and take "language enemas." This regimen, designed by Silentist matriarch Jane Dark, is intended to purge Ben of all emotion, to "zero out heart." Ben's father, who introduces the book with a bitter message to the reader, has been banished by the Silentists to a hole in the ground behind the house Ben's mother, who bids the reader farewell at book's end, is a remorseless Silentist disciplinarian. Conceptual daring, deadpan humor and dizzying forays into allegory mark Marcus's first novel, the semi-science-fictional tale of a boy raised in a futuristic Ohio by his experimentalist parents and a sect of radical women Silentists. ![]()
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