It knows the depths, where monsters lurk, but maintains a most extraordinary reticence and sangfroid about the tragedy it unfolds. Girl in Landscape is full of talk, but it is perhaps, at the same time, the most silent book I can easily remember ever reading. The story is not hard to follow. We begin in a greyed-out New York, where it can be fatal to walk outdoors under the naked poisonous sun.
Emigration is a common choice.
Her mother dies of a sudden tumour. The emigration goes ahead. The narrative says nothing. None of the characters are conscious of the figures, or the fate, that underlie them. Girl in Landscape is silent about itself.