In an opulent villa near the English channel lives a well-to-do family. A man— husband, father, employer—has been shot dead. The bullet is from his own gun, which he got from the Germans during the war. In this family, the father has a safe, a monkey wrench, a wife, and a maid named Rose. The son has a swing, a croquet set, a rain coat, and a car. They all read detective novels to fall asleep (the father), to stay awake (the son), to distract herself from an empty marriage (the mother). Packed with brutal revelations, the novel centers on the twenty minutes of silence it takes for the family to alert the doctor (who lives next door) of the father’s death. Everything in this high-octane drama is subject to change, including the setting and the characters, who are truer to life than might at first appear. But who if anyone is the true criminal and who is the victim? In this marvelous and sui generis novel, written in Bessette’s signature taut and stripped-back prose, the detective novel is turned inside out and wholly on its head.
Bessette sustains the mood with hypnotizing language. This slippery and satisfying novel probes the unresolvable mysteries of life.
— Publishers Weekly
It's a very fine book.
— Raymond Queneau
Living literature, for me—it’s Hélène Bessette.
— Marguerite Duras
I’ve never understood why Lili is Crying and Twenty Minutes of Silence have not been given their rightful place on the very frontline of the avant-garde, alongside Nathalie Sarraute and Marguerite Duras.
— Alain Bosquet
This riveting translation at once slays and reinvents the mystery genre. Replete with operatic revelations.
— Thúy Đinh, NPR
Bessette's story rivetingly dissects the whodunnit form in a constellation of language.
— Monocle
An impressive example of what Bessette can do with form and language, giving primacy to individual speech while also denying the idea that there’s ever a singular “I,” and always teasing out the reader’s attention and laughter.
— Hannah Weber, Words Without Borders
With its dark absurdist humor, chronological chaos and effervescent language, this is a dizzying take on a crime thriller: a collage of words and an examination of what lies behind those words, translated with glittering fluency by Kate Briggs
— Lee Langley, The Spectator
A striking indictment of bourgeois life—In Bessette's world the victim is really the culprit, and the culprit is the victim. Twenty Minutes of Silence is especially mesmerizing for its incantational rhythms; Bessette's passionate flows of consciousness and rebellion against narrative and grammatical conventions feel daring and contemporary.
— Kaya Genç, The Believer
The poetry is active and lively, and it rhythmically taps out the beat of a murder investigation. That’s the beauty of Bessette’s writing, and of the masterful translation work of Kate Briggs. Briggs has found a way of transferring the original French into cacophony and silence alike, without missing a beat.
— Cory Anderson, Euro Lit Network
A singular approach to novel-writing, which still feels fresh and unexpected. . .Wordplay is deeply serious in Twenty Minutes of Silence. The tragedy at its center is expressed through games of grammar, as though the author and her narrators are desperately trying to rewrite the narrative, rewrite history.
— Clem Clements, Book Blast
Odd and oddly compelling ... Cacophonous, giddy with speculation and condemnation, swerving wildly between doubt and surety.
