Silence
Country: Philippines
Author Name: Maria Francheska Paola P. De Leon
Publisner Name: 8Letters Bookstore and Publishing
Original Language: English
In a world where body parts can be exchanged freely, those with incomplete body parts are treated as subhuman, called the “Incompletes”.
The novel starts in a cafe where Lily, a tongueless Incomplete, is wondering who stole her tongue: Long-Fingers the cafe owner, Ringlets the heiress, the muscular Mr.
Teeth, and the mysterious Sweater Girl.
The abuse she underwent prompted her to remember the events prior.
Months earlier, Lily traveled to the City to find Sweater Girl.
She meets homeless Incompletes: No Ears, No Nose, Stumps, and The Woman Without A Scalp, learning the City’s Rules.
Once Lily found Sweater Girl, the latter issues a challenge: find out who took her missing tongue within one year.
Throughout the novel, Lily’s past memories and present are blurred, telling the story of Sister, Mother, He/Him, and the Eye-less Old Man.
She eventually finds out that Ringlets stole the Woman Without A Scalp’s hair.
Infiltrating the black market with No Ears, she finds that there are no records of her tongue.
Back to the scene at the beginning of the novel, Lily suspects
...the patrons in the cafe.
After Mr.
Teeth’s attempted assault on her, Long-Fingers confesses his identity: the Eye-Less Old Man’s son.
Lily and Sweater Girl meet at the latter’s apartment, where Lily learns that her tongue originally belonged to Sweater Girl.
In a final flashback, it showed that Lily was the cause of Sister, Sister’s unborn child, and He/Him’s deaths: her tongue was severed as punishment.
In despair, she decides to leave the City, but is accosted by Ringlets.
The Woman Without A Scalp appears and they take Ringlets to the den of Incompletes, where they harvest her body parts.
The novel ends with Lily amassing an army of Incompletes, intending to wage war against the Completes.
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