Kate McLoughlin's 'Silence: A Literary History' Reviewed in The New Yorker

The New Yorker reviews Kate McLoughlin's 'Silence: A Literary History' (Oxford), a 696-page survey exploring silence across literature, history, and culture. The review, by an unnamed critic, highlights the book's breadth, from Beowulf to COVID lockdowns, and its inclusion of figures like John Bunyan, Margaret Cavendish, Shakespeare, and Thomas Hardy. McLoughlin, an Oxford English professor, examines various silences—traumatic, Stoic, happy—and touches on contemporary issues like transness and climate crisis. The critic notes the book's omissions, such as legal silences (Miranda rights) and cinema, despite nods to Harpo Marx and Marcel Marceau. The review also critiques McLoughlin's personal political asides, including her Brexit Remain vote and social media deletion. The book is praised as a 'trigger book' for unexpected connections, pairing Tennyson with Ed Sheeran and the Foo Fighters, and Jane Austen with Jack Benny and Immanuel Kant. The review concludes that despite its eccentricities, the book is worth reading for its intellectual stimulation.