Claudio Piersanti's spare novel observes the life of Luisa, an aging accountant for a toy firm. She is active, liked, utterly serene in her solitude and her fixed habits. But a series of changes challenge her. An outside world of noise and unknown callers intrudes, and worse, Luisa must cope with the slow collapse of her body and health. This leads her to a fateful mistake: she retires. Soon she has withdrawn into total seclusion and must confront depression and dementia alone -- and the ultimate silence that lies beyond. Piersanti uses sharp detail and nuance to construct an everyday life. Luisa and the Silence is the portrait of an ordinary person, distinctive neither in appearance nor in the depth of her thoughts. Avoiding any pretension to social criticism, Piersanti instead has created a daring novel where the main character simply is.