Review: Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Title: Feed Them Silence

Author: Lee Mandelo

Publisher: Tordotcom

Length: 105 Pages

Category: Sci-Fi

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: Feed Them Silence isn’t a book to pick up if you’re looking for a short, light read. It’s a great story, though, and I couldn’t put it down despite how irked I was most of the time.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: What does it mean to “be-in-kind” with a nonhuman animal? Or in Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon’s case, to be in-kind with one of the last remaining wild wolves? Using a neurological interface to translate her animal subject’s perception through her own mind, Sean intends to chase both her scientific curiosity and her secret, lifelong desire to experience the intimacy and freedom of wolfishness. To see the world through animal eyes; smell the forest, thick with olfactory messages; even taste the blood and viscera of a fresh kill. And, above all, to feel the belonging of the pack.

Sean’s tireless research gives her a chance to fulfill that dream, but pursuing it has a terrible cost. Her obsession with work endangers her fraying relationship with her wife. Her research methods threaten her mind and body. And the attention of her VC funders could destroy her subject, the beautiful wild wolf whose mental world she’s invading.

Review: Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon is a scientist who will sacrifice everything, including her wife, Riya, and their marriage, along with, it appears, the subject of her research. And she will do it for her own edification and obsessive curiosity. Feed Them Silence is not a book aimed at endearing Sean to readers. Quite the opposite, in fact. Lee Mandelo made the protagonist the ostensible villain of the story when Sean and one of the last remaining wild wolves are implanted with a device that allows Sean to interface with Kate, as the wolf is known, to see and interpret the world through the animal’s eyes. To what end? The answer to that question is what makes Sean all the more unsympathetic, even though she believes she’s being a compassionate observer.

“Spying on the brains of some starving animals sounds more horror movie than heart-warmer to me.” ~ Riya

Human encroachment on wildlife habitats is squarely in the crosshairs of the story. Sean merely represents all of us who watch as forests are leveled for the sake of suburban development, and then cry foul when we see coyotes or foxes in our backyards because we’ve overtaken and starved them out their habitats. Sean doing what she believes is the right thing doesn’t mean it isn’t pointless if she can’t do anything to fix it. That she feels more in-tune with the wolf pack than she does with people isn’t endearing as much as it is an observation of her socialization and her gullibility of the corporation funding her venture. Not in an altruistic interest of the wolves, of course, but in the financial boon for them if they can figure out how to monetize the interface for the masses.

Feed Them Silence isn’t a book to pick up if you’re looking for a short, light read. It’s a great story, though, and I couldn’t put it down despite how irked I was most of the time. Mandelo wrote this short novel during the pandemic lockdown, and it shows in the loneliness of a woman looking for companionship in any way she can find it, while completely overlooking her own wife.