I Can’t Tell You by Hillary FrankHoughton Mifflin, 2004

I have a thing for epistolary novels, and I liked the premise of this one: a college kid, after a fight with his best friend, decides he should avoid fucking up friendships by simply not speaking. He writes notes, instead, and that’s what this book is made up of: notes, e-mails, one-sided conversations in which Jake (the aforementioned college kid) is writing notes and the person he’s conversing with is talking, not writing. It’s filled with charming pen and ink drawings: the patterns that ice skates make on the rink, or the marks that teeth leave on skin, and I love the way that Frank turns these things into a real narrative, a story that says so much without words. I wouldn’t call this a book about elective mutism in quite the same way that E.L. Konigsburg’s Silent to the Bone is—this is more a book about college life, being young and negotiating friendships and sex and love, but it’s a quick and (mostly) interesting read.