The question’s in the title.
My writing group were discussing this, we’re sure there must be a novel out there that doesn’t contain any dialogue, but none of us could think of one.
Any ideas?
No criteria other than a complete absence of speech.
Cormac McCarthy doesn’t use quotation marks, but there are certainly people talking in his books. Dunno of any dialogue-less novels.
John Hawkes’ Travesty takes the form of a monologue - it’s the driver of a sports car explaining to his two passengers exactly why he plans on ramming them into a stone wall at a hundred and fifty miles an hour. Neither of the other characters speak. IIRC, one of them is having a panic-induced asthma attack, and the other is lying on the floor of the back seat, vomiting in terror.
So, no dialogue, but the whole novel is a speech given by one of the characters. If the OP is looking more for novels where no one talks at all, it’s disqualified.
Thanks. They’re both close enough to note at the next meeting - we’d been discussing stream-of-consciousness novels as well as the differences between direct and reported speech.
It came about because one of our newer writers (we de-virginated him for writing short stories!) had written a piece where none of the characters spoke, possibly they weren’t capable. We wondered if it could be maintained for an entire novel, or if it had been done already.
Please do keep the suggestions coming, I’d love to learn of a novel that fully fits the criteria.
Come to think of it, C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is entirely a series of letters from a senior demon to a junior one in Hell’s bureaucracy. Not sure I remember any dialogue in it, as such - even quotations by Screwtape as he recalls someone speaking.
Wouldn’t Screwtape fall into allegory/satire?
I suppose… but isn’t there such a thing as a satirical or allegorical novel?
Well, the genre doesn’t matter. The salient point is that it’s an epistolary novel, which is quite common.
Some of Samuel Beckett’s later works might qualify as long as you’re pretty flexible about what counts as a novel.
I’ve got *Screwtape *around the place, I’ll check it out - though IIRC the style was very conversational and would probably count as speech.
Beckett? A major gap in my reading, I’ve heard the name without picking up a book. I’ll check out the library.
Thanks again, keep 'em coming.
What about Griffin and Sabine?
I’ve never actually read it, though I enjoyed the spoof, Sheldon and Mrs. Levine.
Going off an old memory, but I think they reported /repeated scraps of conversation in at least one of the later books. Perhaps even in the first (I keep seeing the fish that wasn’t there…)
That may fall into the picture book before the novel category though. Still looking for Screwtape.
What about the short novels and other works of HP Lovecraft?
For example Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath doesn’t have dialogue although it has a rather long speech at the end.
Flowers for Algernon is technically a series of progris riports written by the character Charlie. In the first few pages under “Preview this book” there, there’s no dialog written, but I suspect Charlie writes uses dialog later in the book.
I recall reading a book maybe 20 years ago called “The Sandman”. Sorry but I can’t remember the author’s name. It was about a serial killer and I don’t think there was any dialog except the thoughts inside the killers head. Downright scarey book.
Frank McCourt didn’t use quotes in his books. Steve Kluger (Last Days of Summer - love it!) uses articles and post cards and such.
“Wittgenstein’s Mistress.”
That is irrelevant. There are plenty of allegorical & satirical novels.
Just flicked through The Screwtape Letters, lots of quotes and reported speech, plus there is a dialogue with Wormtail as Screwtape reacts to the un-presented replies (a one-sided dialogue?).
Thanks for the link jjimm, that’s a much better description than I’ve given here.
Peanuthead, is thisit?
CP, Kluger sounds like another Griffin and Sabine, which did the same thing, Does Frank McCourt have conversations, just without punctuation? I don’t think that would count.
Lovecraft I’ll leave for the others to look into, I read some as a teenager and was thoroughly unimpressed, there were a whole lot of creepy weirdness stories doing the rounds & Lovecraft was just the last straw that made the genre boring for me. I did enjoy the Hello Kthulu spoof though.
Flowers for Algernon, now there’s another I’ve been meaning to get to. Regardless of the current question.
Hazel, Wittgenstein’s Mistress looks very promising, one of the reviews even says it’s ‘in the style of Beckett’!