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Loading... Deafening (2003)by Frances Itani
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A puff of air, an aroma or a movement in the corner of her eye - these are the signals that something is happening around her. For Grania (Graw - née - a) is deaf as a result of a bout with scarlet fever when she was a child. Grania has a protective mother (who feels guilty for her daughter's deafness), and a loving grandmother and sister who help her. She is sheltered until she is nine, when it is was apparent that she needed schooling. She is sent to the Ontario School for the Deaf 20 miles away. She thrives there, meets her best friend, Fry, and her love, Jim. When WWI intervenes the lives of everyone, including Grania, are turned upside down. Set in Canada as well as World War I France Deafening is well-researched, with insights into what it might be like to live without sound. The amount of research that went into this novel is obvious from the beginning: Frances Itani is meticulous in trying to accurately portray the smallest details of the lives of her characters. The story is moving - cataloguing the damage caused by the First World War to the lives of the characters and describing the difficulties faced by a deaf person in a hearing world. Hard for me to give a star rating as I skimmed the whole of the book after Grania and Jim got married. I found the part I read properly mildly interesting and it was a pleasure to read of a deaf child being sent away to a special school and settling in and doing well there and learning to sign and speak. Jim seemed quite sweet, but he was a bit of a surprise as we had skipped over most of Grania's teenage years. After that it turned into a WWI novel, a genre I find too upsetting to read any more, so I skimmed it to the end. The friend who lent it to me loves this novel, but she is a braver reader than me. I wish we had found out how Jim and Grania's marriage fared after his return. no reviews | add a review
Born on the shores of Lake Ontario, Grania O'Neill suffers a childhood illness that destroys her hearing. Grania's life without sound is also a life bounded by a powerful family love that tries to protect her from suffering. But when it becomes clear that Grania can no longer thrive among the hearing, her family sends her to the Ontario School for the Deaf. There, protected from the often unforgiving world outside, she learns sign language and speech. And there she meets Jim Lloyd, a hearing man, and the two, in wonderment, begin to create a new emotional vocabulary that encompasses both sound and silence. But a war is raging on the other side of the world. Only two weeks after their wedding, Jim must leave home to serve as a stretcher-bearer on the blood-soaked battlefields of Flanders. During this long and brutal war of attrition, Jim and Grania are pulled to the centre of cataclysmic events that will alter civilisation forever. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I am looking forward to Itani’s next book.
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