Deafening

Deafening tells the story of Grawnia, a girl in a rural Canadian town at the beginning of the 20th century, who has lost her hearing due to scarlet fever. The story spans just over about fifteen years of her life, starting from when she is a very young girl learning how to communicate with people after losing her hearing, to going to school for the deaf, to falling in love and getting married, to living through WWI.

The Review
I don’t know what it is about books about Canadians in WWI, but I feel like I’ve read more of them in the past few years than I have of all other nationalities in all other wars combined. I’ve read some brilliant ones that I have/will come back to again and again, but you wouldn’t think it’s a subject show more matter I would enjoy reading about. It’s usually emotionally raw (in at least portions of it) and it tears you to bits, but it keeps drawing me back for more…

This book was definitely one of those about WWI that I will be coming back to again. I loved this book so very, very much.

It was a bit hard to get into at first. It’s a quiet novel, so felt a little bit slow-paced even though there was always something going on, whether it was Grawnia’s adjustment to being involved with the deaf community, or whether it’s about her husband Jim’s experiences in the war.

I’ve never read any books before where the main character is a deaf person, but I love how this gave me such an insight into the life of someone who would not be able to hear a thing. It was brilliant to get a glimpse into that. And even the way the book is narrated, it just seemed to embody that soundlessness – when you’re reading about Gawnia, you don’t hear the noise of anything else that is going on, it’s just focused exactly on what is important at that exact moment.

The Bottom Line
What an utterly beautiful book! It was a bit slow moving at times, but totally worth getting into. I want to say that this is one of the best books I’ve read this year, but seeing as I’ve now read five books this year… it doesn’t really express how much I loved it. show less

This is a tender and deeply moving book. Frances Itani tells the story of a deaf woman (loosely inspired on her own deaf grandmother), waiting for her young husband’s return from WWI with superb prose. The complexity of what is or isn’t communicate in every relationship, the loneliness of disconnect, and ultimately the healing power of love, family and friendship is weaved through the plot with mastery.

I am looking forward to Itani’s next book.

Three stars is a little stingy; 3.5 might be more accurate. I really like reading about a person who grows up deaf, about how she adapts to a different form of communication. Learning a bit of ASL myself, I appreciated the inclusion of some signs within the text. And having lived in Belleville for four years, it was neat and interesting to read about the region in the historical context of World War I.

However, because I was mostly interested in the deaf culture aspect of the book, I found myself a little impatient with the war scenes. The juxtaposition of Jim's attention to sound with Grania's life without sound was interesting, though I did not really attend to that theme as well as I could have (or maybe that was a fault in the show more narrative, that it wasn't as acute as it could have been).

In general, I've found Itani's novels to be better than pop fiction, but not quite at "literature status" (the distinction being my own scale). This story is a perfect example of that. show less

This book was sent to me from Canada by a cousin of the author after we'd had a discussion about historically-based fiction. I very much enjoyed it and wish that Itani's work was more available in the U.S. She wrote Deafening in part to honor her grandmother, who grew up deaf from scarlet fever.
Intense research made the details of everyday lives from 1903 to 1919 feel very personal and visceral, and we are made to feel the privations brought by World War I. Sound, both its absence and intensity, is a thread throughout the story, as is isolation.
Reading Deafening made me think about how diferently we seem to regard hardships today, even how differently we define them, complain about them, seek compensation and blame for them.

A touching, endearing story and often brutal when referring to life on the Western front during the First World War. The relationship of Grania with the people around her is charmingly expressed especially with her husband Jim, or as she calls him Chim.

4.25 stars

Grania was left deaf after a bout of scarlet fever when she was 5. She was finally sent to a school for the deaf at 9 years old, and by then was very good at lip reading, and she did speak some. Just before World War I, she met and married her husband, Jim, a hearing man, who went to war two weeks after their wedding to serve as a stretcher bearer (carrying wounded men off the battlefield).

I really enjoyed reading about the deaf culture near the beginning of the 20th century. Later in the book, it shifts between Grania's and Jim's perspectives during the war. I found both stories intriguing. I thought Itani did a good job describing the war scenes and I loved Grania and Jim's relationship, as well as Grania's relationships show more with her grandmother and sister. I really liked this and I don't know why it took me so long to read it. show less

This is a first novel that arrived to very positive reviews. I thought it was good, but perhaps not as over the top as I had been led to believe by the reviews.

It tells the story of Grania, a young girl growing up in the small Ontario town of Deseronto, on the Bay of Quinty. Grania loses her hearing at the age of five due to scarlet fever; her family tries to keep her home and in a normal school, but finally at the age of nine, sends her off to a school for the Deaf and Dumb in Belleville. Grania returns home after several years in the school, falls in love with and marries a hearing man, Jim, who goes off to WWI as a stretcher-bearer. So here we have the two main strands of the book: the world of the deaf and the horror of the show more trenches. The connecting theme, it seems to me, is that of isolation: the isolation of the deaf in trying to make sense of, and to function in, a hearing world, while at the same time building their own world which only the deaf can understand through sign or lip-reading (the novel touches on the debate about which is best for deaf people); compare this to the horror of the trenches where death is every present and arbitrary in its timing and choices and which is, again, a world unto itself that those outside can never comprehend; compare further to those who are severely wounded (such as the husband of Grania`s sister) who return to the `normal` world, but are isolated in their physical or psychological pain and experiences. Grania in fact is the only person who can reach the wounded husband, by teaching him how to speak again as if he were a deaf person, and because she understands what it is to be separate while still being part of the `normal` society.

Grania`s grandmother, Mamo, is one of the most sympathetic characters in the novel. The descriptions of the horrors of the trenches ring true, and I think Itani does convey well the sense of separateness of the deaf, and the sometimes well-meaning, but more often just ignorant and condescending attitude of many hearing people.

Each chapter begins with a quote from The Canadian, a magazine published by the director of the School that Grania attends, and which I suspect is real. One quote caught my eye: Ìt is just as pleasant and grand a thing to die for Canada and the British Empire today as it was for Rome in the brave days of old`. Which, of course, recalls Wilfrid Owens` great line about `the old lie`: Pro Patria Mori show less