Review
Nicole Markotic in Yellow Pages focuses on the early life of Alexander Graham Bell. There is Bell's family (a deaf mother and linguist father, an older brother who dies of TB at 25) and his first love, Marie. And later, there is Thomas, Bell's assistant, and May Hubbard, the deaf daughter of a wealthy Massachusetts businessman who funds Bell's experiments. Bell, like May's father, is an oralist who believes that sign language should not be taught because it segregates the deaf into a world of deaf people, and much of the tension in the story arises from this. May, who becomes Bell's wife, narrates part of the book, and through her eyes we see the human being behind the inventor.
Markotic employs an intense, symbolic style, using voice and language as recurring motifs. Like an extended metaphor in a long poem, they lend unity to the work. Partly fiction, partly biography, partly a commentary on communication, expresses the poem in Bell's story.
Eva Tihanyi (Books in Canada) -- Books in Canada
Markotic employs an intense, symbolic style, using voice and language as recurring motifs. Like an extended metaphor in a long poem, they lend unity to the work. Partly fiction, partly biography, partly a commentary on communication, expresses the poem in Bell's story.
Eva Tihanyi (Books in Canada) -- Books in Canada
Book Description
A novel that travels through the life and mind of Alexander Graham Bell the man whose "little contraption" changed the way the world communicates.
Reviews
"These fictions set the stage for revisionist possibilities by cracking the sacred seal of Canadian historiography."
-Border Crossings
"Markotic proves to be a good story-teller, a philosopher, and a poet, a rare but engaging combination."
-University of Toronto Quarterly
About the Author
Nicole Markotic is a Red Deer Press author.
