Ian Mond Reviews Silent City by Sarah Davis-Goff

Silent City, Sarah Davis-Goff (Tinder Press, 978-1-4722-5524-2, £20.00, 288pp, hc) July 2023. (Flatiron Books, 978-1-25026-262-2, $27.99, 256pp, hc) October 2023.

Silent City by Sarah Davis-Goff is the sequel to one of my favourite novels of 2019, Last Ones Left Alive. Zombies are not typically my thing (I needed to be persuaded to watch The Last of Us, though I’m glad I did), but I was taken in by Davis-Goff’s plucky, resourceful teenage protago­nist (who’s not dissimilar from The Last of Us’s Ellie), her take on the undead – they’re called the Skrake; they run rather than lurch with jaws dominated by a nasty, slimy proboscis – and the narrative’s intimate regard for the natural world, finding beauty in decay and ruin. In contrast, I found Silent City to be a bit of a mixed bag. The plot leans too heavily on dystopian tropes, though it’s enlivened by Orpen’s growth and the story’s feminist and queer perspective.

If you haven’t read Last Ones Left Alive, fair warning: I’m about to spoil the heck out of the book. The novel begins with the striking image of 14-year-old Orpen, kept company by her dog Danger, hiking through the ruins of Ireland, heading for the sanctuary of Phoenix City. She is pushing a wheelbarrow wherein lies Maeve, her deceased mother’s partner, recently bitten by a Skrake. Things don’t end well for either Danger or Maeve; Orpen, however, survives. She even protects several other survivors she encounters on her journey, allowing herself to be captured by the Banshee – a hard-knuckled squad of women who forage for supplies on behalf of Phoenix City – so her new friends can remain free.

Silent City begins shortly after the climax of Last Ones Left Alive, with Orpen reaching Phoenix City, where she is forced to become a member of the Banshees that apprehended her. We skip six years, greeted by a hungry, weary Orpen training with her troop. ‘‘Another glorious day in Phoenix City,’’ she tells us. ‘‘Another night done of fitful sleep, waking in the dark, thinking I hear my mother crying for me to come home.’’ Orpen’s bitterness speaks to her environment. Phoenix City is no sanctuary. It’s a prison, where the walls are reinforced to keep out thousands of Skrake by the wallers, a starving workforce that in­cludes children. ‘‘You can see their bones through whatever threadbare clothing they wear, held together by stitches we can nearly count as we go past.’’ It’s disturbing and hellish, with the Banshees acting as heavies on behalf of ‘‘Management,’’ the male rulers of the city. For fans of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, the political dynamics of Phoenix City, a totalitarian society ruled by mostly faceless men will seem very familiar. When Orpen does cast her eye to the world around her, what we get is a gloss: there are the wallers, the breeders, the sick and elderly who live in shanties, and, of course, the men who lord over everyone from the top of the city. I appreciate why this is the case. Just as Orpen was naïve about the broader world in Last Ones Left Alive, she has a fledgling appreciation of power dynamics and class structure. It’s not that I wanted to know more about ‘‘Management;’’ what glimpses we get are repulsive enough, but having read several brilliant novels that explore dystopias from a feminist and intersectional perspective (I’m thinking: Marisa Crane’s I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt and Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers) Silent City left me wanting something more than the recognition that the monsters aren’t the Skrake but men who covet power.

Ironically, what for me is a narrative weakness of Silent City – Orpen’s limited understanding of her environment – also proves to be a strength. Starting with feelings of guilt after she and her troop kick down a hovel, harassing a burnt woman and her child, Orpen has a political awakening (though it’s never made clear why it took six years to reach this epiphany). Her doubts grow when she is forced to participate in a ‘‘Punishment,’’ a regular event where anyone deemed to have betrayed the City, is thrown from a height past the walls to be feasted on by the Skrake. The novel’s centrepiece, the Banshee’s terrifying encounter with the Skrake in an abandoned airport, brings things to a head. It emerges that Orpen’s troop have been plan­ning a revolution for some time. Alongside this, Orpen explores her sexuality. Her experience is messy and conflicted. She’s in love with Agata, her fellow Banshee, a love that is reciprocated but never consummated. It’s an intimacy at an awk­ward distance, made even more uncomfortable when Orpen discovers that Agata has a lover and daughter with a ‘‘Breeder.’’ But when coupled with Orpen’s growing sense of social justice, it makes for a textured portrait of a young woman recognising that she has agency. Despite that Silent City not working as strongly for me as the first book, I will read the final volume in the trilogy. I want to see how Orpen grows and develops when she is freed of the expectations and rules imposed by others.

This review and more like it in the November 2023 issue of Locus.

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