Elizabeth L. SilverBesprekingen

“It’s funny how undressed a smile can make you feel.”
― Elizabeth L. Silver, The Execution of Noa P. Singleton

I found this book to be outstanding and an easy five stars.

Noah P Singleton is on death row awaiting execution. Her crime? Murder.

Nobody knows why Noa murdered and people want answers..especially the mother of the female victim, Sarah. When the victim's mother comes to visit Noa in jail she offers her a deal. She will work to get the death penalty off the table if Noah tells her the truth about what happened and why she murdered her daughter.

I found this book impossible to put down. The story was so unique. It also raises questions and issues about the Death Penalty. But most of all I was drawn in so deeply to Noah's story.

For readers complaining about the way Noah speaks..one has to remember she has been in jail for years. She has somewhat of a flat affect and that comes through. Added to that, she is a death row inmate and alot of the book takes place with her speaking from a prison cell. I was able to get over that issue quickly but then again we all like different books. I found this to be an outstanding and heartbreaking read.

I look forward to reading more from this author.

I received this book from netgalley.com

What a book. I found myself rooting for Noa the entire time and really despising the victim's mother. Even with the knowledge that Noa is a murderer, I still found myself really hoping that Oliver could help her get out of jail. I loved how the relationships developed and though I am usually one who roots for a happily ever after ending, I think the author did a great job with the plot and character development. I think the last time I hated a character as much as the victim's mother was when I read Gone Girl. Definitely some twists I wasn't expecting and then of course some others I figured out. Overall, a great book and a quick read.

The book lacks a linear narrative, a single likable character, or even a cohesive theme. I presume it is intended as some sort of weighty exploration of the issues surrounding the death penalty, but the author dives into the murky waters surrounding executions without an ounce of panache. The plot twists are nonsensical and hard to follow. There are no clear cut answers at the end either and long self indulgent and mundane soliloquies by Noa and Marlene throughout. Skip it!

We begin the novel almost at the end of the life of Noa P. Singleton.

Noa in six months will be executed for a murder she committed. We find out that Noa was found guilty ten years previously for the murder of a young woman. Noa is visited by an attorney, Oliver Stansted, who is working for Marlene Dixon, the mother of the young woman Noa murdered.

Oliver's goal is to get Noa a commuted sentence so that she will not be executed for the murder. Ultimately, Marlene's goal is to get Noa to reveal what happened to lead to her daughter's death though Noa is reluctant to revisit that with the attorney or Marlene.

I ended up just rating this three stars because even though the storyline is an intriguing one I had a hard time finding anything commendable about the character of Noa or Marlene. You quickly find out through Noa's tale of her upbringing and what led her to murder another person that she is seriously not a sympathetic person at all. There definitely seems at the end that the author wanted to show that Noa wasn't all bad but I just didn't get there. When we come upon the character of Marlene and what actions she committed to lead to this tale you end up feeling appalled by her behavior as well.

I think it is very hard when an author writes a story told from the anti-hero point of view. You have to give the readers enough details to at least show them where the character is coming from so that the reader can at least root for that person or become invested in them in some way. However, in the end, I definitely did not root for Noa or excuse her for what she did.

Finally I really couldn't understand Marlene's thought process. We find out that Marlene at least guessed at what happened and why so why she needed Noa to tell her story so to speak was just a framing device that I thought really didn't work in this story the way that it should have.

Please note that I received this novel via the Amazon Vine Program.

Over-written and under-plotted.

This book had a good storyline, but I feel the ending was kind of rushed and put together. Some you were able to figure out and other things seemed left unfinished, Caleb and Oliver/Ollie. I feel there should have been more of a reveal, I was waiting for this huge twist in the story.

A ‘tincture of time’ is what is necessary for many, if not most, ailments to resolve one way or another. You give a patient antibiotics, and wait to for them to act. You cut a person open, and wait for them to knit back together. Or you wait, and the patient dies. Some ailments take longer to resolve than others. When Elizabeth Silver’s six week old daughter Abby starts having seizures, despite hundreds of ultrasounds, MRIs, and blood panels, in the end only time gives them an answer as to what will happen- a lot of time. Years.

While the book is based around little Abby’s medical problems, it’s about a lot more than that. It includes the history of how fever has been interpreted and treated since the ancient Greeks, Silver’s husband’s scare of an arachnoid cyst (a thing in his brain that’s harmless but looks terrible on a scan), how her sister-in-law organized 40 women to bake challah and chant prayers to have Abby cured, and much more. It’s also about how Silver is surrounded by doctors (her father, her sister, her husband) and so is right at home with medical stuff- her father, lacking a baby sitter one day when called in to do an emergency appendectomy, took 10 year old Silver to the hospital with him and then, since the nurses couldn’t provide child care, scrubbed her up and took her into the operating room with him- and how her faith in medical science is eroded by its inability to do something to help her daughter. It’s about how three different social workers came in and questioned them mercilessly as to whether one of them had abused, hit, or dropped Abby. It’s about how the fear that a medical problem- especially one that no one ever found out the reason for, and that had no ‘cure’ other than time- never really goes away. She likens, for a while, the mystery and the waiting of Abby’s disease to the disappearance of the Malaysian jet liner that had just vanished over the ocean; she feels like one of the loved ones, waiting on the ground for news, any news.

It’s an interesting story, but I felt the author wandered too much. I think perhaps the author was doing it to show how her mind wandered during the endless waiting, but it doesn’t help the narrative. The bit about fever was, perhaps, useful in the section when Abby runs a fever. The bit about the Wild Boy of Avignon less so, as is stuff about Shakespeare and quantum physics. The Malaysian jetliner is a great metaphor. I know the book originally started as an essay and an editor talked the author into expanding it into a book; I think perhaps it should have stayed a long essay. Four stars out of five.

In this brave, fierce, shattered, devastated tale of uncertainty, Silver takes us on a roller coaster ride! One moment up, the next down. One moment determined. the next full of uncertainty. But always with hope that there will be a tomorrow.

Silver will touch you like no other author ever has. You will find moments of smiling. And others where you will need tissues for the tears.

Silver touches us, in this unforgettable story of medical uncertainty. Her baby girl has a brain bleed. And what comes from that knowledge is enough to drive any mother over the edge.

Silver finds a way to rise above all of the pain and uncertainty. And she shares with you this very personal, very real story. An intimacy is there, like a best friend.

You won't be the same after reading this.

Just try to read it over several days. You can't. you will sit down with it, and you won't stop turning the pages until you are done. Because, like a good friend, you will be there to the very end. Your heart breaking. Your eyes tearing. Your emotions taxed.

I give this five stars,

a big thumbs up,

and I highly recommend it.

Medicine is like faith, "a collection of interpretations...rife with conflict." Doctors interpret data and apply those interpretations to wholly unique circumstances. In this way medicine is an applied science, of a sort. Elizabeth L. Silver, with precision of language and fullness of thought, chronicles the years she spent inhabiting the uncertain spaces between treatment and trust in this open memoir that tears a heart in two, then mends it to the beating hearts of humanity.

Interesting story line and main character but overuse of metaphors was distracting. Overall I enjoyed the book.

Very compelling book that's hard to put down, but ultimately a little unsatisfying.

2.5 stars. This book never paid off for me. However, I have learned two things from this book:

1. If the author photograph looks as if it were styled and shot by Danielle Steele's photographer, I will put the book down and walk away. (kidding)

2. If the author bio states that the author possesses an MFA from anywhere, I will put the book down and walk away as 9 out of 10 times (this book included) what will follow will be an exercise in self-aggrandizement. I want to be in love with the story, not in love with the fact that you, as the author, are in love with your perceived ability to string words together. (totally not kidding)

This one was a big disappointment for me.

This book was overly long. Did not enjoy any of the characters. A waste of time.

This is a page turner with unexpected revelations doled out in the latter half, but it left me dissatisfied. None of the characters, however interesting, achieved clarity in their own minds nor did they understand each other. There were no winners in this book, not even the reader.

Book received by and review written for BloggingForBooks.org.

Exquisitely written and beautifully told, this book was a delightful surprise. Noa is no common criminal; that much is clear from the beginning. As her story unfolds, her life turns out to be both tragic and inspiring. Not often would I feel compassion and sympathy for a self-confessed killer, but it is impossible not to like Noa and root for her clemency.

The strong and vividly penned characters in this novel are excruciatingly real. Marlene loves her daughter with a smothering love that many only children will recognize and understand. Caleb feels the regret of a wasted life, resulting in him manufacturing the one he wants...until it seems that he will get it; then he panics. Oliver is wide-eyed with youthful hope and the pure taste of justice. Even Patsmith is fully drawn in my mind, as she walks her own green mile.

Far from predictable, the suspense in what actually happened to Persephone, Caleb, and Sarah is gripping until the end. Silver presents her non-linear story so deftly and seamlessly that is both easy to follow and allows the story to be constructed from inside-out, and numerous angles. The use of letters from Marlene to Sarah is brilliant in presenting a very complex, flawed yet sympathetic character.

Another word about the writing. Silver acknowledges the intelligence, humor and conflicted nature of her reader. The writing is thoughtful and sensitive, as well as non-confrontational about the very sensitive subject of capital punishment. It is also witty and wry, adding a bit of levity at just the right times.

Impossible to put down and indelible in its mark, this is a must-read for the summer! I hope Silver has many, many more novels in her future. My personal library will boast them all.

The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth Silver
5 Stars

This book grabbed me right from the beginning. The story starts out by introducing us to Noa P. Singleton, a young woman in prison due to be executed in six months. One day, the mother of her victim, Philadelphia lawyer Marlene Dixon, shows up at the prison to tell Noa that she has formed an organization called MAD (Mothers Against Death) and no longer believes in the death penalty. She wants to use the resources of her firm to appeal to the governor for clemency on Noa's behalf. What she wants in exchange is for Noa to tell her why she killed her daughter. Apparently during the trial Noa never gave her lawyers any explanation and refused to testify on her own behalf.

The story is told from Noa's perspective and I love the way the author slowly extracts the story over the course of the book. The story is dispassionately narrated by Noa and she weaves her way through her life and how she ended up on death row. That part of the story is interspersed with visits from Oliver Stanstet, a young lawyer preparing the clemency paperwork. The other part of the story are letters Marlene has written to her daughter, giving us a window into the mother's actions and feelings without changing the focus of the story.

Noa's character is extremely well done. While I was reading I could never be sure she was the victim of circumstance or an evil killer who deserved to be on death row. The plot is interesting and well developed, with both the murder and Noa's approaching execution date running in parallel. I'm still thinking about it days after I have finished it. It was one of the best books I've read all year.

The premise of this book was really interesting. I was intrigued by the narrator's status as a death row inmate, and was prepared for a good story that intertwined mystery and maybe some psychology. What I got was a story I didn't quite understand, characters I didn't particularly like, and motivations that didn't make sense. Don't get me wrong -- I don't NEED to like the characters necessarily in order to like a book. I felt, though, that the author WANTED us to identify with Noa, and while the reader did learn throughout the course of the novel WHY Noa did what she did, I can't say the motivations really stood up for me. In all, I found it strange, with characters acting in ways I did not feel real people would act in life. The characters didn't feel fully developed...throughout the novel, it is reiterated how smart Noa is, how she excelled in so many ways--while also discussing how terrible her childhood and her parents were. But these were all just kind of stated, without the reader feeling like there was much investment in this character or her life. It ended up being a let down all around, even though it had so much potential.

Elizabeth Silver's debut novel opens with the introduction of Noa P. Singleton waiting on death row in a Pennsylvania prison, six months prior to her scheduled execution. Ten years after her original trial and with little hope of an appeal, Noa has accepted her fate when she is unexpectedly visited by powerful lawyer Marlene Dixon. With a sudden change of heart, Marlene, the mother of Noa's victim, has decided to work toward a clemency petition. As Noa's execution date nears, she attempts to piece together her past to figure out who her changing circumstances will benefit and if she truly deserves forgiveness.

As I started reading The Execution of Noa P. Singleton, I was quickly distracted by the flowery style of Silver's writing. With strings of mismatched words, often interrupted by afterthoughts in parentheses, I felt more like Noa was writing a college admissions letter than introducing readers to her story. However, as Noa begins to detail her past, she takes on a lighter, more narrative tone that is easier to digest.

Silver is quite adept at leading readers down unexpected paths and into unforeseen moral dilemmas. What I thought might be a simple examination of the American criminal justice system was actually a novel that kept me guessing to the very end. The Execution of Noa P. Singleton is a well researched, smart look at the perils of capital punishment with just enough suspense to keep readers on edge.

Noa P. Singleton is in her late twenties, intelligent (although she chose to drop out of college), attractive, sharp tongued, sometimes tender, sometimes bitter and sitting on death row. She is quite resigned to the fact that she is going to be executed because she did, after all, commit the crime. Unexpectedly, the victim’s mother, a high powered lawyer, brings a colleague to visit Noa with the news that they are going to file for clemency in the hopes of having Noa’s sentence transferred to life in prison. Noa’s story is told in turns through Noa’s diary, her conversations with her attorney and letters written by the victim’s mother to her dead daughter. Noa’s story is a sad one of a life filled with making the wrong choice at a crucial moment in time.

Overall this was a pretty good book. My problem is that the timing of my reading of this book was horrible. I had recently read Burial Rites by Hannah Kent and although one is historical fiction and one is pure fiction the books are very similar in subject matter. I may have thought more highly of Ms. Silver’s book, but in the shadow of Burial Rites it unfortunately ranks as a poor contender. I certainly do not want to dissuade anyone from picking up this book, I only wish I had read the two books in reverse order or had a little more time between the two.

I found this, for me, to be the best read of the year so far. There are so many sides to it; so-much-so that when I was asked the old question "So, what's it about? I found it difficult to explain the story in one easy-to-understand sentence or indeed paragraph for that matter and, in the end I just had to urge the person to go get a copy and read it. They asked me, "but why?" I said just do it you'll like it you won't regret it. Obviously writing a review I could say a whole lot more but just like - Noa P. Singleton - I too struggle with choosing the right and fitting words to use and so, just like my friend I say to you the reader of this little review - "just go and get yourself a copy. Read it and then see if you can describe the story to someone else in one easy sentence."½

Complex and inventive. Makes you see the wisdom on not assuming or judging until you know the story.

The Execution of Noa P. Singleton was a very interesting and unique book. Its about a woman, Noa P. Singleton who is on death row for killing a pregnant woman. Its told in the first person, by Noa herself. She is unapologetic and seemingly unremoreseful. She has 6 months left till her execution date. During her time in prison, she has had very few visitors save the media and attorneys.

Then she is visited by Marlene Dixon, the mother of the woman she is on death row for killing and a high powered attorney. She says she has had a change of heart and no long believes in the death penalty and wants to help Noa’s sentence be commuted to life imprisonment instead. Marlene brings with her a young man named Oliver to help her. They want her to tell her story on the reason that it will help them in building the case that could spare her life.

The story is told in the form of journal entries and Noa speaks of her life on death row, the tedium of being kept in a cell for 23 hours of the day and allowed outside for 1 hour. She seems to be indifferent to this as she seems to be about everything.

Marlene does add another voice later in the book as she begins to write letters to her deceased daughter Sarah. And in these letters, you begin to see a very calculating and vindictive person. This creates another level to the mystery and you begin to start questioning what really happened.

Noa begins to tell her life story to Oliver, slowly unfurling to him a far more complex person than he originally thought. He begins to do his own investigating and what he discovers leads him to believe that Noa didn’t get a fair shake and hopes to try and get her a new trial with what he uncovers.

I have noticed that a lot of people seemed to dislike this book or only slightly like it. Mostly because of the vagueness and indifference of Noa, and not enough from the other characters. I disagree with this. I found the book to be written in a very unique and haunting voice and wonder if this is what might be expected of a woman who was this close to her execution on death row.

I think its that people want a more “likeable” character in Noa. Or, they want her to be a true sociopath. What they find is neither of these, but a woman who is resigned, indifferent, bored. Its only in her journal that the story of what happened begins to fully unfold. Her father finding her just shortly before the murder. The victim, his young lover, a girl her age that he met while he was trying to track her down.

She learns about Sarah when she meets Marlene, who wants her to break the two of them up because she doesn’t feel Noa’s father is good enough for her daughter. More and more layers begin to develop as the story progresses.

I found it to be a very complex story told in a very authentic voice. I would not be surprised to find there are many in prison that would have a similar tone. Noa would be barely likeable to most people as she doesn’t even seem to care much about her father or anyone else in her life. So, in that way, she was a sociopath. But, she was not only lacking in empathy, but lacking in emotion almost entirely. Its a haunted tale about how things are rarely how they appear and guilt and innocence are often a multi-layered thing on the same coin.

Its an excellent novel and even more so given its a first novel. Well worth the time to read. I, for one, will watch for the next book from this young author.

http://sephipiderwitch.com/the-execution-of-noa-p-singleton-elizabeth-l-silver/
SephiPiderWitch
February 2015

The audio was compelling---very effective readers. The twists and turns in the story of what really happened was what kept me listening and although there are lots of hints along the way, the "answer(s)" are kept hidden right to the end.

Great book, great writing. Keeps you guessing until the end.

Intriguing story. It had twists that make you think about crimes and who is at fault. I am a bit perplexed by some of the twists so I am glad that we will be discussing this one in book club next week!½