Lori Schiller

Lori Schiller is the protagonist of The Quiet Room. Born in 1959, Lori grew up in a well-to-do upper middle class Jewish home in upstate New York. She had a wonderful childhood, with two loving parents, Marvin and Nancy and two younger brothers, Mark and Steven. She was intelligent, pretty, talented, and had a bright future. The story begins, however, when these dreams begin to be shattered. When Lori was seventeen, she was a camp counselor at summer camp; during the summer, she had her first encounter with The Voices, or the auditory manifestation of her burgeoning schizophrenia.

The Quiet Room primarily covers Lori's life between ages seventeen and thirty. During this time, Lori's personality quickly degenerates from a light-hearted, ambitious and witty young girl to a woman whose life is dominated by her severe mental illness. The Voices are such a powerful influence in Lori's life that...