Elizabeth L. Silver

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 show more 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.

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SephiPiderWitch
February 2015 show less

This book has been the subject of countless laudatory reviews and was, until the longlist was announced, a constant on the lists on various sites of possible contenders for the National Book Award. And I can't figure out why this over-written novel of thin characters has come in for so much praise. Sure, it's got the young woman on death row thing which, to be honest, made me want to read it over more worthy books set in less exotic locations. Here's the premise; Noa P. Singleton is sitting show more in prison, waiting for her execution date, having exhausted her appeals when the mother of the woman she shot appears and offers to help with her final plea for clemency. The rest of the book looks back on the events leading up to the crime, explaining Noa's motivation and the events that led her to kill another person.

I know, right? I was on board from the start and ready for something that I wouldn't be able to put down. Then, over the course of the first chapter I noticed that the author had chosen to give Noa an overblown style of expression, with no noun or verb left undecorated and with a wide assortment of metaphors and similes called into use. Often Noa made no sense, but I chalked it up to the author choosing to write Noa's words like she were competing for the Bulwer-Lytton Prize. Then Elizabeth L. Silver added a series of letters written by the mother of the dead woman and used the same unreadable style and I was forced to acknowledge that the poor writing wasn't a conscious choice, but actual poor writing.

His moans lubricated the phone lines like a sexually transmitted disease.

Waves of perspiration dripped over my fingers.

He had eyelids like meat patties, slight flaps of creamy skin folded over his lids like a blanket tucking his pupils in.

Dark black hair hung over those phosphorescent eyes, while her Greek knob of a nose poked through the waterfall of curls.

These are not occasional flights into sloppy writing (dark black? Really? As opposed to light black? And what about those STDs to make a woman wet?) but a constant barrage of randomly constructed descriptions. And despite the first person narration, I knew as little about the main character on the final page as I had on the first. Sure, there's the Big Reveal at the end to explain some of her actions, but it was too little, too late. show less

Elizabeth Silver and her husband, Amir, were alarmed when their six-week old daughter, Abby, started vomiting and seizing. They took her to Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, and at first, the tests came back negative. However, a scan eventually revealed that Abby had bleeding in her brain. Silver describes her panic, guilt (although she had done nothing wrong), and fear that her baby's ability to function would be compromised. In addition, she and Amir endured a lengthy interrogation about show more whether they had hit, dropped, or shaken their infant.

"The Tincture of Time" is "an amalgamation of how [Silver] coped with Abby's hospitalization and rehabilitation." She emphasizes how difficult it is to wait for information—"the answers were comforting, available, and effortlessly clear, until they were not." She received insensitive, albeit, well-meaning advice, and stood by, exhausted and wrung out, while her precious child was prodded and probed in the Newborn and Infant Critical Care Unit.

Although this is an affecting and poignant memoir, it requires quite a bit of patience, since the author goes off on a number of tangents that are loosely tied to her central themes. She writes about the Malaysia Airlines disaster; unreliability of eyewitness testimony; the groundbreaking ideas of such luminaries as Hippocrates, Heisenberg, and Montessori; and whether medicine is an art, science, or both. Furthermore, she touches on her childhood; work as a lawyer and novelist; questions of faith and religion; and how she and Amir stayed sane while they were sick with worry. Mothers and fathers who undergo similar ordeals will appreciate Elizabeth Silver's perceptive observations. She expresses—using lyrical prose and literary references--the agony of distraught parents whose children struggle with serious illnesses and face an uncertain future. show less

Just about the best I've ever read about complete and total alienation caused by a string of the worst possible luck. There is much to admire about the protagonist Noa, a young woman who's on Death Row for a seemingly motiveless murder. The writing is also crisp and goes very deep into the psyche of this poor woman.

Strong portrayals of her mother, father, attorney, friends, boyfriends, and the demonness on her tail make this a completely satisfying tale, albeit not your ideal beach read. show more It's an object lesson in taking more care. show less