The Execution of Noa P. Singleton

A Novel

By: Elizabeth L. Silver

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Amanda Carlin

A beguiling debut novel about the stories we tell ourselves to survive, the scars that never fade, and the things we choose to call the truth.

Noa P. Singleton speaks not a word in her own defense throughout a brief trial that ends with a jury finding her guilty of first-degree murder. Ten years later, a woman who will never know middle age, she sits on death row in a maximum security penitentiary, just six months away from her execution date.

Seemingly out of the blue, she is visited by Marlene Dixon, a high-powered Philadelphia attorney who is also the heartbroken mother of the woman Noa was imprisoned for killing. She tells Noa that she has changed her mind about the death penalty and Noa’s sentence, and will do everything in her considerable power to convince the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison - if Noa will finally reveal what led her to commit her crime.

Noa and Marlene become inextricably linked through the law, shared sentiments of guilt, and irreversible mistakes in an unapologetic tale of love, anguish, and deception that is as unpredictable as it is magnificently original.

©2013 Elizabeth L. Silver (P)2013 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"In this grippingly off-kilter thriller, a young woman sits on death row after being convicted of murder until a high-powered attorney – the victim’s mother – intervenes, leaving everyone to wonder why." ( O, The Oprah Magazine)

"Silver has written a darkly witty, acerbic jigsaw puzzle of a first novel about legal versus moral culpability…[and] explores convolutions of guilt and innocence beyond the law’s narrow scope with a sharpness and attention to detail that can be unnerving but demands attention." ( Kirkus)

"Vividly written debut novel...Silver definitely delivers a thought-provoking examination of the criminal-justice system, providing a clear-eyed view of the artificial theatrics that dominate criminal trials and a heartfelt look at both grief and remorse. An intriguing debut from a writer to watch." ( Booklist)

Please Highlight Nancy Grace's Review, OK?

One of the best written books I have listened to lately. Well thought out plot with lots of unique ways to look at the hard topic of the death penalty all in a captivating and clever fiction.


Noa is the very cynical main protagonist. If I have one complaint about this book that it’s a downer. Not a single upbeat in the entire book. I don’t know how you would write a death row novel that wouldn’t be. Noa has been sitting on death row ten years when the story opens. The remainder of the book gets the author up to date on Noa’s history and moves on to where she goes from here. Wow. The reader gets the back story before the trial. The trial of Noa is so resilient of the some recent death trials involving female lovers and mothers, but from all angles. For all the information that I thought was important to the case was not revealed in the light I thought would give be the best conclusion.

The story allows the reader to make their own conclusion though it’s extremely thought provoking. I will be thinking about this book for a long time and listening more dubiously to those television trials.

"Like Silent Thunder" and other bad metaphors

After the first couple of chapters, I really wasn't sure I was going to be able to hang with Noa P. - the book seemed completely overwrought and bogged down with lavish descriptions of irrelevancies. These roadblocks to the progression of the story quickly became irritating. It slowed the conversations between the characters, as Silver took time to describe the sensation of every breath, precise descriptions of the appearance of one character's fingers pressed against a pane of glass, and other minutiae. It's tedious.

Despite the morass of words, the story picks up and becomes compelling at the halfway point. I genuinely wanted to know what happened - there is a strong story here, but it's hard to see it under all the linguistic frippery. I wondered if perhaps the excessive descriptive language was deliberate on the part of the author, to make us feel as trapped, helpless and hampered as Noa does; but even if this is the case, it was still annoying.

One huge pet peeve: at one point, bullets go tumbling into a backpack "like silent thunder." What is silent thunder like? Wouldn't it be like nothing? If something is silent, isn't is basically not at all like thunder?

ANYWAY. I still liked the book. Once the action gets going, the language gets terser and better. I found the ending unsatisfying, but only because I had come to care about the outcome. Worth a listen.

Kept me guessing until the last page

Death row is a sad and lonely place. In the face of death, one always wonders what really happened,and is the truth enough to justify the taking of a life. This books tackles these ideas without judgment or pontification. It is a gripping page turner with characters you love (some in spite of yourself). The narraters are perfect, and I can't reccomend this book highly enough. It is a perfectly paced story that I would read again (a rarity). I want more by this author.

Are We Speaking the Same Language?

If books were free and there was no budget juggling necessary to pay for my addiction, I wouldn't care that a book was arbitrarily heralded and rolled out on a red carpet; I'd chalk a stinker up to an unlucky gamble--pick another from the book tree, and read on. Or, if *professional* critics reviewed books with no thought to marketing, I'd gladly accept my bad taste in literature and go on confidently to the beat of my own drum. Ah, if dishes were wishes... I wouldn't feel so hoodwinked (and light in the pockets); I wouldn't aim my discontent at those well-marketed wastes of trees. But gosh darn it I have spent a lot of $$ lately on books that are more wiener than winner. Therefore, I saw this author's own words, in the first chapter of this book, as encouragement: *once something has been said, it's impossible to ignore or forget what you heard* -- and I heard this book was supposed to be *genius*.

The Execution of blahblahblahblahton would be an outstanding paper for a literature class, or a passable rough framework for a novel, but served up as an amazing debut novel from a promising new author, one of June's top picks...it's a few trumpets short of a fanfare. I don't want to detract from the author's talent, or suggest its arrival should have been heralded by kazoos; she writes with intelligence, uses a considerable vocabulary well, and the book has a forceful pace that never drags. Some of the dialogue is very clever and provocative; she definitely has style, and deserves to be tagged as promising. I believe Elizabeth Silver will be an author to watch for, once she develops a little patina. The story itself is a flat plane, without dimension or plausibility; it suffers from an ambiguous theme and lack of direction or character development. Silver may have had a good premise, she just didn't flesh it out or give the reader the infrastructure for independent interpretation. It seemed inflexible and formulaic. Using the mother's letters to her dead daughter was expository dialogue that made the story feel even more contrived, and rigid. Instead of steering the reader to form those profound moral questions, she forces the reader instep and stuffs a pre-set opinion down the throat.

No reader agrees 100% all the time with all the critics; but lately I've been wondering if I'm speaking the same language as some of those paid to give their opinion. You may find this book very good--I'd agree with that assessment, but genius, mesmerizing, gripping, outstanding, consuming, unforgettable? That's why I ignored the 24 hr. rule and wrote this review immediately...ask me tomorrow and I won't remember this one, but I will remember Elizabeth Silver.

I really wanted to like it

It took me two separate tries to get through this book. It started out strong and I was craving to know more about Noa and Sarah, and even Marlene. But it petered out quickly and I struggled with motivation to pick it up again day after day. I eventually needed to return it to the library. I tried again a few months later and tried so hard to get into it. I was invested in the story, I cared about what happened, but I just couldn’t connect with any of the characters and I could read about 10 minutes before getting bored. I finally downloaded it on Audible to crawl through the second half while I did my daily walking. It wasn’t much better. The reader seemed almost bored most of the time, with all of the wrong inflection and none of the punch. There were times when someone in the book was clearly yelling, trying to get get through to the person they were talking to and the reader presented them as quiet and reflective. It was all wrong. In the end, I wanted Marlene to know what her role in her daughter’s death was and it really bothered me that she never would. I hated every single character in this book and thought it was all just so much about miscommunication and the immature beliefs of a young woman who never had anyone to talk to about life and consequences.

Hold your loved ones lightly, like butterflies...

There is a lesson in Elizabeth L. Silver’s “The Execution of Noa P. Singleton.” The lesson is to hold those you love lightly, like butterflies, and give them the freedom to float away at their will.

Noa P. Singleton is the product of two dysfunctional parents. Her mother is a constant disappointment. Her father, long-estranged from Noa, is taking tentative steps toward coming back into her life.

Marlene Dixon is a mother who wants the best for her daughter. She is so driven toward this end that she enlists the help of Noa to ensure Sarah follows the path Marlene sees most fit.

And so these two women are linked. Don’t be fooled that their connection starts at the beginning of the book, when Marlene, a high powered attorney, arrives at the prison to inform Noa of her plan to file a clemency appeal. Their connection runs much deeper.

If you are reading this book because you’d like to hear about Noa’s life on death row, you will be disappointed. This book is not about Noa’s life on death row. This book is not even about Noa’s death. The book is about her life and how her choices (with some help from Marlene Dixon) brought her to where she is.

There isn’t a whole lot of joy in these pages. It will not leave you feeling uplifted. But there is that lesson, and if you take heed of it, you may hope to avoid many of the mistakes made by people in this book.

A somewhat frustrating story

The story of Noa and the events that led her to wind up on Death Row and just months before her execution unfolds as the mother of the girl Noa was convicted of shooting shows up asking for the whys behind it all. We learn about Noa's childhood, the father she never knew, the mother who was to busy with husband # x, and the woman who hired Noa to breakup her daughter's relationship. Noa never fought for herself when she was on trial - she believes she deserves to be there, but the reader has to unfold her stories to truly find out what makes Noa feel this way.

To me, this was an interesting story about Death Row and how individuals end up there. Are they destined to end up there from their childhood? Did our law force truly convict the right person? Did they even look at anyone else? And if you've always been on the short end of the stick, is it right to just give up and assume it's your lot in life?

Was the writing a bit verbose? Sure. Did I want to strangle some of the characters at times? Absolutely. Was I hoping for a different ending? Of course. I saw a little bit of myself in Noa and that only made me want her to fight harder for herself instead of just sitting on Death Row for 10 years. In addition to the "who done it" mystery, I enjoyed how the book made me analyze my judgments and assumptions about those who are sentenced to an execution.

Sorry, but not the next "Gone Girl"

There’s no question the book is compelling but to be truthful the readers (they are to be praised for a magnificent read. They made us hate all the characters so much that we just had to know what motivated them) saved it from failure. The moral ambiguities that the story brings out are worthwhile to discuss, ie. Is the death penalty moral?” but the story doesn’t do it justice. The author definitely succeeded in forcing me to finish to find out what really happened but I felt (don’t want a spoiler here) the ending was somewhat non-believable. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the book but it was no, “Gone Girl”. When I finished the book, I realized that I didn’t “believe” any of the characters even though I knew them well. Was this Ms. Silver’s intent? I don’t think so. I think it is just a case of a first novel lack of depth. I know it’s not fair to compare but when I read a book like this (here I mean the author’s linguistic gymnastics), I’m forced to think of a book like “American Pastoral”. After all, we have to set the bar somewhere. When I think of the characters in Noa P, they are so anemic and thinly drawn that they disappear almost as quickly as the earplugs are out. During a talk to librarians on Youtube, Ms. Silver admitted getting the idea for the plot while taking a capital punishment course in law school but only began writing the book in earnest while she was working on a real life capital punishment case. That sounds about right to me; she was working out her own ambiguities of the issues in the case in fiction. The problem is that she had too much law and not enough character in the writing. Although she tries to describe the legal system objectivity, if she stays in the legal profession, I would be shocked. Her dislike of her chosen profession is so obvious. I think that is ultimately one of the flaws of the book. During due diligence of the revisiting of the case, the inadequacies of the trial are so numerous, that it’s hard to believe a death sentence makes any sense. I think Ms. Silver lucked out on getting such a boost of publicity. We were all “Jonesing” for the next “Gone Girl” and voila’ “Noa P appears. Great premise and potential and great marketing but ultimately the book doesn’t deliver. I have to place this book in the “a good quick summer read while waiting for the next really great book” category.

well-written but too many facile connections

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

yes interesting ideas about the justice system without being preachy; needed more character development for some of the "history" and connections between the characters.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

knew it was coming -- expected more karma for Marlene.

Have you listened to any of Rebecca Lowman and Amanda Carlin ’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

narrator for Noa (Rebecca Lowman) was perfect in voicing the false bravado assertiveness covering the gaping need inside of Noa. Marlene (Amanda Carlin) was OK but not as good but I think that was just because the character wasn't developed as much by the writer.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

no -- they would miss the gray areas.

Wonderful escape

If you could sum up The Execution of Noa P. Singleton in three words, what would they be?

Stunning sentences

What did you like best about this story?

Noa P and the language , great character development

What about Rebecca Lowman and Amanda Carlin ’s performance did you like?

Love the voices the cadence everything