Unspeakable: The Things We Cannot Say

In this meandering combination of memoir, journalism, and literary analysis, British filmmaker Shawcross seeks to make sense of her impending wedding and of the year she spent basically unable to speak when she was 13 by investigating the causes and meanings of silence. Each section weaves together memories, the poems of George Oppen (who didn’t write for 25 years after publishing his first book), and an interview. The first section covers Shawcross’s year of silence and a trip to a camp in New York for children with selective mutism; the second her college experiences with sex alongside an interview with feminist playwright and activist Eve Ensler, drawing connections between silence and trauma, abuse, and shame; the third Shawcross’s youthful experiences in Kathmandu, where she first experienced desire for another woman, and a look at how trauma has affected the survivors of the 2015 earthquake. In the fourth section, she goes on a silent retreat and learns that silence can be communal. The final section recounts the author’s wedding and reckons with Oppen’s descent into Alzheimer’s and death. The connections between topics can feel tenuous, and readers may be put off by the implied parallels between, for example, Shawcross’s experience coming out and those of traumatized earthquake survivors. This meditative, idiosyncratic exploration of communication and intimacy is more a miscellany than a coherent whole. (May)