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From Amazon
Set in a small town near Belleville, Ontario, between the years 1903 and 1919, Deafening is the story of Grania, a girl who goes deaf from scarlet fever at age five. Much of the first third of the book is a view into the intimate world of the deaf, as Grania's grandmother teaches her to communicate, and her sister, Tress, helps her deal with her childhood fears. Eventually Grania goes away to a school for the deaf, returning home each summer to a family she misses terribly, at the hotel run by her father and mother. When the teenaged Grania falls in love with Jim, a man who is not deaf, this nearly plotless novel begins to gain momentum.
Shortly after their marriage, Jim is shipped overseas to fight the Kaiser. The middle section of the novel is taken up with Jim's experiences as a stretcher-bearer in the war. The scenes are predictably grim and graphic, with a thick spattering of the gore for which that conflagration is famous. Meanwhile, Grania begins the long, worrisome, and tedious wait for Jim to return. Itani's skill is in noting precise detail, "blotchy sausages" and "rhubarb pies with lattice tops," and in capturing Grania's inner life ("She was certain that she could identify Jim's heartbeat from all heartbeats"). The pacing, which is slow and thoughtful, fits the period and the characters. Ultimately, this is a love story constructed of sound and silence. --Mark Frutkin --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
War and deafness are the twin themes of this psychologically rich, impeccably crafted debut novel set during WWI. Born in the late 19th century, Grania O'Neill comes from solid middle-class stock, her father a hotel owner in Deseronto, Ontario, her mother a God-fearing daughter of an Irish immigrant. When Grania is five, she loses her hearing to scarlet fever. When she is nine, she is sent to the Ontario Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in Belleville and given an education not only in lipreading, signing and speaking but also in emotional self-sufficiency. After graduating, she works as a nurse in the Belleville hospital, where she meets and falls in love with Jim Lloyd. They marry, but Jim is bound for the war as a stretcher bearer. His war is hell on earth: lurid wounds; stinks; sudden, endless slaughter redeemed only by comradeship. Itani's remarkably vivid, unflinching descriptions of his ordeal tend to overshadow Grania's musings on the home front, but Grania's story comes to the fore again when her brother-in-law and childhood friend, Kenan, comes back to Deseronto from the trenches in Europe with a dead arm and a half-smashed face, refusing to speak. Grania, who was educated to configure sounds she couldn't hear into words that "the hearing" could understand, brings Kenan back to life by teaching him sounds again, and then by making portraits of the people in the town whom she, Kenan and her sister Tress know in common. As she talks to Kenan, she reinvigorates him with a sense that his life, having had such a rich past, must have a future, too. This subplot eloquently expresses Itani's evident, pervasive faith in the unexpected power of story to not only represent life but to enact itself within lives. Her wonderfully felt novel is a timely reminder of war's cost, told from an unexpected perspective.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well written but very slow pace.,
By Pauline LeBlanc (Dieppe, NB) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Deafening (Paperback)
Canadian author Frances Itani depicts the story of Grania, an early twentieth century girl who is rendered completely deaf by scarlet fever at the age of five. The reader is eventually led to her early adult years where she marries a hearing man that shortly thereafter leaves to serve as a medic in World War I. The novel covers a very broad range of subject matters ranging from sound and silence to love and war all the way to the great flu epidemic. In my opinion, above all, Deafening is a book about overcoming adversity.I am not surprised that this novel has recieved so much acclaim. The main characters are very well developed and the content well researched. The novel truely gives an inside perspective on deafness and war. Itani's portrayal of deafness in the pre-assistive listening technology era is so vivid it is hard to believe she is not Deaf herself. Through Itani's writting, the reader enters Grania's inner world of silence and experiences its many implications. At many points during the storyline, I was left reflecting on our world of sound and how we take for granted the variety of sounds to which we are exposed to every single day. I very much enjoyed the journey through Grania's childhood and her experiences in the now antiquated boarding school for the "Deaf and Dumb". Itani was also able to vividly portray the horrors of war so as to almost make me cringe while reading. I also appreciated how she paralelled the silence as experienced by Grania and the horrible noise of war as experienced by her husband Jim and how they shared a connection through the description of their respective experiences of sound and silence. The novel however had some more disapointing points for me. It was repetitive at times and in my opinion too diffuse. I felt that a few turning points in Grania's journey were underdeveloped such as her courtship and wedding to Jim. The novel hurried through such a momentous stage in Grania's story but seemed to drag on endlessly through other less impactful points. The third section of the novel when Jim heads off to war seemed unnecessarily long and all it led up to was an abrupt and frankly disapointing conclusion. All in all, I am glad I read the book because its strong points were worth reading.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good story, but not as engaging as it could be,
By
This review is from: Deafening (Paperback)
(This review is cross-posted on LibraryThing)I was hoping to enjoy this and be moved by it more than I was in the end. It was well written and the first portion of the novel was very engaging, the characters were likeable and I found Grania's experience growing up deaf very interesting. Once the story shifted to WWI and Jim's (Grania's husband) experiences in France as a stretcher bearer, I lost my connection. I'm not sure how to describe it, the only thing I can think of is that Itani's way of writing the WWI experience didn't feel very authentic. Sometimes it felt like things cobbled together from various history books. I think I also had a hard time caring about Jim because the story doesn't really say too much about how his relationship with Grania developed before they got married and his voice never felt totally distinct from hers. Overall, it was an enjoyable read and there were several touching moments in it, but it dragged after the first third and never completely picked up again.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Simply Delightful,
By
This review is from: Deafening (Hardcover)
This novel gives a wonderful, insider's view of deafness and war. Once Jim goes off to WWI, some of the chapters are told from his perspective. At first, I was disappointed by this shift, but as the war (and ultimately, the novel) drags on, I wanted to know what was happening to Jim and the boys he was working with. Itani writes wonderful, three-dimensional portraits of Grania's family, especially Mamo and Tress, Kenan, Fry, the various characters in Deserando, Jim (Grania pronounces his name as Chim), Irish (the name is ironic, considering that Grania is Irish) and even the teachers at Grania's deaf school. Though the novel drag on at moments, you will want to read it until the end.
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