By Kim McCullough
Content Warning: Sexual violence, suicide, war
Speak, Silence by Kim Echlin follows Gota Dobson, a Toronto-based single mother and travel writer for an airline magazine. Gota has watched the Yugoslav wars on TV for years when an opportunity arises to attend a film festival in Sarajevo. Gota knows she has to go, at the very least, to see Kosmos, a man she’d met in Paris eleven years earlier. After that brief but life-changing affair, he left her. Now, he runs a theatre company in Sarajevo, and Gota is willing to risk the visit, even though the fighting is still going on outside the city.
Once in Sarajevo, Kosmos introduces Gota to Edina, a lawyer who has shouldered the burden of compiling stories of the women who were sent to rape camps and brutalized during the war. A court has been set up at the Hague to try war criminals and bring justice to the women who suffered at their hands. Edina, who was also held captive, will join the survivors in testifying against the main perpetrator. Though the women, who include Edina’s daughter and mother, can never recover all they’ve lost, they hope a trial will be a step toward healing.
As the trial approaches, Gota’s friendship with Edina deepens. Gota is determined to support Edina and the women by attending court each day. Kosmos and the other male characters—Gota’s editor, a taxi driver, a guard at the courthouse—slip into supporting roles. They show kindness and decency—normalcy that provides a stark contrast to the men who raped and murdered their way through the war.
Echlin keeps the narrative focused firmly on the women, drawing parallels between Edina and Gota and their respective mothers and daughters. Edina and her family can’t ever go home again, while Gota’s lives in peace and safety in Canada. Gota’s daughter is concerned with her future, while Edina’s just wants to forget her past.
During breaks in the trial, Gota returns home to Toronto. These brief respites from the difficult testimony in the Netherlands are rich with detail and freighted with a dreamlike sense of unreality. Echlin carefully draws out a sense of disconnection in Gota; she misses her daughter, but her attention is always on Edina and the women.
Speak, Silence is well-researched and beautifully crafted. The narrative slips through time, sometimes moving quickly through events and sometimes in slow and deliberate detail. Echlin’s prose is both succinct and eloquent, and her dialogue shines, sometimes more in what isn’t said than what is on the page.
Speak, Silence is a crushing call to bear witness to the brutal crimes committed against women in the Yugoslav wars. And yet, beauty is found in the incredible strength and friendship that defines Gota and Edina’s bond, as well as the bravery and allyship of the women who stood before the court to tell their terrible truths.
*Thank you, Penguin Random House Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review