The Silent Land by Graham Joyce (2010)
Everybody has seen or read at least one Groundhog Day story. You know, where somebody is trapped in a day that keeps repeating or in a place they can't leave, until some moral wrong is repaired or the trapped protagonist undergoes a spiritual transformation of sorts.
Fortunately for me, The Silent Land doesn't really care about morals, but about marriage and love. It doesn't have two heroes, Zoe and Jake, but one: their couple. The empty resort they can't leave, the strange visions and apparitions, the alteration of time, everything that happens happens to them
as a couple, which makes the ending, albeit predictable, very effective.
What are the forces that drive a couple apart, what keeps two people together... and how much time do we still have with each-other? How do we stay together forever? Can we? Should we?
"She sat on the bed watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he slept on. She reached out and held his hand, half-hoping that he would wake, half-hoping that he would not. She decided to leave it to the Fates. If he woke she would tell him about the horse outside. If not, she wouldn't. She had to ask herself why she wasn't allowing herself to tell him about some of the events that were happening around them. why she was staying quiet about these things was also a mystery to her. It was as if some primal part of her was terrified that no event in this place could be good for them. She felt - irrationally but with a conviction that came from deep in her bones - that with each new development, something was trying to insert itself between them. Only absolute stasis would live them alone."
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