"...why bother being conscious and miserable when unconscious and complacent was an available option?"
Peter Bremmer: shy, lazy, and self-conscious, focuses on avoiding minor inconveniences, and trying to carry on conversations where he doesn’t stammer. He’d be better off, he decides, resigning himself from humanity, not trying to fit in at all, and never speaking to anybody ever again.
But quite by accident he strikes up an online relationship with a wonderful woman, Petunia, whom he'd like to get to know better. He’ll lose her if he doesn’t talk to her, but to speak to her after feigning silence for so long means he’d also have to explain why he’s been lying to her all this time.
It’s as Peter steps off the hamster wheel of his life that he meets Bill, the man who does the puppet show in the local outdoor market, a man who, like Peter, does not speak. Bill shows Peter that to really speak from the heart, one doesn't have to say a word.
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