On his first night in the nearly 1000-year-old Benedictine monastery in Praglia, Lorenzo, the titular character of Upamanyu Chatterjee's new novel Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life (Rs 699, Speaking Tiger), experiences the “abominable quiet". As he retires to his room, he experiences a strange unease that he eventually realises is the unfamiliar silence. "It feels like the deafening hush between the end of a piece of music played at total volume and the stopping of the turntable