A Silent Treatment by Jeannie Vanasco
"Unspeakably compelling."—Ed Park
“A Silent Treatment confronts both the complexity of family and the quandary of capturing a family’s shapeshifting and perplexing love, their truthful and devoted love, in the amber of memoir.” —Megha Majumdar
- Sale Date
- ISBN
- 9781963108453
- Page Count
- 304
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 5¼ x 8
- Imprint
- Tin House
Meet the Author
Jeannie Vanasco
"Unspeakably compelling."—Ed Park
“A Silent Treatment confronts both the complexity of family and the quandary of capturing a family’s shapeshifting and perplexing love, their truthful and devoted love, in the amber of memoir.” —Megha Majumdar
She did it to my dad, though. They used the silent treatment on each other, she explained, because they didn't want to say something they'd regret.
What does she want to say now that she'd regret?
Jeannie Vanasco’s mother starts using the silent treatment not long after moving into the renovated apartment within Jeannie’s home. The silences begin at any perceived slight. Her shortest period of silence lasts two weeks. Her longest, six months. As Vanasco guides us through her mother’s childhood, their shared past, and the devastating silence of their present, she paints a layered, complicated portrait of a mother and daughter looking, failing, and—in big and small ways—succeeding to understand each other. In the margins of her research, at her kitchen table with her partner, in phone calls to friends, and in delightful hey google queries, Vanasco explores the loneliness and isolation of silence as punishment, both in her own life and beyond it, and confronts her greatest fear: that her mother will never speak to her again.
From the acclaimed author of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I was a Girl and The Glass Eye, Jeannie Vanasco’s A Silent Treatment is a searingly honest and lasting testament to the power of all things left unsaid.
“A Silent Treatment confronts both the complexity of family and the quandary of capturing a family’s shapeshifting and perplexing love, their truthful and devoted love, in the amber of memoir.” —Megha Majumdar
She did it to my dad, though. They used the silent treatment on each other, she explained, because they didn't want to say something they'd regret.
What does she want to say now that she'd regret?
Jeannie Vanasco’s mother starts using the silent treatment not long after moving into the renovated apartment within Jeannie’s home. The silences begin at any perceived slight. Her shortest period of silence lasts two weeks. Her longest, six months. As Vanasco guides us through her mother’s childhood, their shared past, and the devastating silence of their present, she paints a layered, complicated portrait of a mother and daughter looking, failing, and—in big and small ways—succeeding to understand each other. In the margins of her research, at her kitchen table with her partner, in phone calls to friends, and in delightful hey google queries, Vanasco explores the loneliness and isolation of silence as punishment, both in her own life and beyond it, and confronts her greatest fear: that her mother will never speak to her again.
From the acclaimed author of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I was a Girl and The Glass Eye, Jeannie Vanasco’s A Silent Treatment is a searingly honest and lasting testament to the power of all things left unsaid.
Praise for A Silent Treatment
-
“Vanasco’s third memoir, focusing on her relationship with her mother, is her most potent yet…. Vanasco captures the hurtful confusion of the silent treatment so clearly…. A beautiful gift to all who have struggled to care for a loved one in the way they needed.”
Booklist, Starred Review -
“A captivating account of the how painful (and powerful) withholding communication can be to a family.”
Largehearted Boy, A Favorite Nonfiction Collection of 2025 -
“Vanasco is without question one of the most versatile and inventive memoirists working today, and her latest tells a powerful story of the gulfs that separate people and the love that bridges them.”
WBEZ Chicago
About the Imprint
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