An intimate and masterful ensemble novel.
On a cold November day, a few people have gathered in a small chapel to lay a relative to rest. The freezing priest hurries to conduct the service, the gravediggers get drunk, and the silent guests lose themselves in their thoughts. In a single sentence, Cristian Fulaș, one of the leading figures of contemporary Romanian literature, takes on the challenge of probing the souls in this moment of contemplation. What emerges is the guilt of having neglected the deceased during her final years of illness, family resentments, the existential anguish that grips one in the face of a lifeless body, but also the love that one failed to express. A feat of stylistic and aesthetic mastery, La forme du silence captures the inner and everyday storms, the vertigo of a moment of stillness in the face of the human condition.
