Synopsis
Set during 1915-19 in Canada, United States, England, Belgium and France, this is the story of a young woman in her 20's, Grania O' Neill (pronounced GRAW-NEE-YA, an Irish name meaning "Love"), profoundly deaf from the age of 5 as a result of scarlet fever. She marries Jim Lloyd, a hearing man who, 2 weeks after their marriage, leaves home in Ontario to serve his King and country and "do his bit for Mother England." Jim tries in every possible way to understand his wife's experience of deafness, and together they explore their love through the silence in which she lives.
Jim is trained as a stretcher-bearer in one of the large camps on the southeast coast of England. He serves in Belgium and France with Number 9 Canadian Field Ambulance. His war experiences, friendships, and care of the dying and wounded during this brutal war of attrition, are moving, intimately detailed and carefully researched to show the realities of the life of a stretcher bearer serving in the front lines.
On the home front, Grania's childhood in a small town on the edge of Lake Ontario, where her father owns a hotel; and as a residential student at "The Institution for the Deaf and Dumb" in a small Ontario city. A bright child, she has to learn "real" sign language (which replaces the private language she and her sister had, as small children, invented). She also learns, by necessity, extreme self-discipline and control over her emotions, which enables her to survive the trauma of leaving home and the facts of institutional life with 300 other deaf children around her. No visits home are permitted during the school year.
Grania's Mother, guilt-ridden and never accepting of Grania's deafness, tries to make Grania hear. She tries for cures by miracle, and by taking her to Rochester, New York, in hopes of finding specialized medical treatment.
Grania's early experiences inside her own silence and within a family that tries to overprotect--despite her gradually developing independence and strengths--later illuminate the complexity of her adult relationships: with her closest deaf friend, Fry; with her older sister Tress--who was once her lifeline; with her Irish Grandmother, "Mamo" (the most important person in her life at home and the one who teaches her to read and to speak, and whose love twice--in separate ways--saves Grania's life); with her 2 brothers; and with her parents.
After Jim departs for the war, both Grania and her sister move back to their parents' home and hotel, where everyone in the family helps out with the hotel business.
The tension in the book is held through the juxtaposition of two worlds: the world of war, violence and sound as shown through Jim's horrific experiences at the Front (which include several major battles); and life for Grania inside the silence of her own world during the long years of waiting on the home front--where news is frequently bad as more and more local boys are reported killed in the war.
Grania's brother-in-law, Kenan, returns from the war in early 1918. He is wounded and mutilated and has stopped speaking. It is Grania who, with her extensive speech training recalled from residential schooldays, makes the breakthrough to Kenan's speech. But this success creates resentment in her sister because Kenan is not able to confide or share his war experience with his young wife.
Events move quickly toward resolution as first, Spanish flu sweeps through the town ( a deadly pandemic), followed by Armistice (Nov 1918) and eventual demobilization. A moving sequence of events with her sister releases tensions between Grania and Tress. The loss of Mamo finally leads to the release of emotions Grania has never permitted herself to express.
In the spring of 1919, Jim returns home. He and Grania have survived, but their separate experiences have altered them forever. Jim has been part of events that "the mind will gorge upon in horror forever." He has lost his closest friend from the war, a man who has been a brother to him. But it is his love for Grania that has kept him going.
Grania realizes, the instant she sees Jim, that neither of them will ever totally understand what the other has been through. Together they accept the realization that, in context of their love for each other, not understanding, not knowing, will have to be enough to move them forward.
Revue de presse
'A deaf woman teaching a hearing man to make sounds again is only one of the wonders in this book. Because Itani's command of her material is complete, the story is saved from being another classic wartime romance--a sad tale of lovers separated. It is a testament to the belief that language is stronger than separation, fear, illness, trauma and even death. Itani convinces us that it is what connects us, what makes us human.' - amazon.com
DEAFENING has a very particular grace and eloquence, and the spareness of the writing beautifully complements the power of the emotions which Frances Itani describes. (Helen Dunmore)
'There's not a single false gesture in Frances Itani's "Deafening." Despite its subjects - war, romance, disability - it's a story of careful, measured emotion, bleached of all sentimentality. The publisher has positioned the novel as a debut in America, but Canadians have been reading Itani for decades, and every page of this story betrays the hands of a mature writer who knows exactly what she's doing.' - Christian Science Monitor
'DEAFENING is a remarkable and absorbing first novel. Itani's writing is clear-headed and sure-handed; her strong characters will not leave you.' - (Charles Frazier)
The subtlety of Itani's writing is nothing short of remarkable . . . her voice is pitch perfect . . . Itani is unquestionably a prodigious talent (Toronto Star)
'remarkably vivid, unflinching descriptions of his ordeal . . . 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.' - Publisher's Weekly
An impressively daring first novel from Canada immerses us in both the world of the deaf and the world of WWI trench warfare . . . Husband and wife embody Itani's theme; the power and reach of love - love that falters only in the face of the unknowable. Itani never loses control of her tricky material: the result is an artistic triumph (Kirkus Reviews)
'This exceptional novel moves from the silence of the deaf to the cacophony of "the front" during World War 1. In between are the hopes and dreams which define our humanity. There are scenes in Deafening which will never be forgotten. From the haunting effects of a childhood disease to the random horrors of war, the uncertainties that become our certainties have seldom been so well explored. A remarkable accomplishment.' - Alistair Macleod, author of NO GREAT MISCHIEF, Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Award 2001.
'A superb novel' - Winnipeg Free Press
Itani's evocation of Grania's world of silence, and the myriad ways we communicate with those we love, is masterly, as is her rendition of hell in the Flanders mud. Despite the dark subject matter, this is a book filled with light. (Guardian)
'I found this an exquisite novel that gave me some understanding of the isolation and frustration for living in silence and a new respect for language.' - Manly Daily, Australia
War and deafness are the twin themes of this psychologically rich, impeccably crafted debut novel set during WWI . . . Wonderfully felt novel is a timely reminder of war's cost, told from an unexpected perspective. Forecast: Itani's first novel is reminiscent of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy (Publishers Weekly)
There's not a single false gesture in Frances Itani's "Deafening." Despite its subjects - war, romance, disability - it's a story of careful, measured emotion, bleached of all sentimentality... every page of this story betrays the hands of a mature writer who knows exactly what she's doing (Christian Science Monitor)
'Itani tells an absorbing story . . . Even knowing the war will end, Grania's anguish and anxiety of waiting is so fully in the moment that I grieved along with her . . . Not a moment rings false. This is a beautiful book.' - Historical Novels Review
'Itani's evocation of Grania's world of silence, and the myriad ways we communicate with those we love, is masterly, as is her rendition of hell in the Flanders mud. Despite the dark subject matter, this is a book filled with light.' Guardian
Itani takes a subject that could have been treacly and sentimental but makes it into something admirably understated, touching and restrained. She writes lyrically about the magical, mysterious way that language, intimacy and trust enable a deaf woman to hear the sounds of the sea and of music - and of how cataclysmic historical events can touch, shatter and ultimately strengthen even the most interior life. (People)
'This is a psychologically rich, deeply atmospheric and exquisitely told story.' - (Woman & Home)
'The book is a meditation on silence and communication, where the alienation and confusion of war become metaphors for the way in which language can be a minefield for the deaf. In a world filled with sound, Grania's story is a stirring reminder that human engagement occurs on various levels.' Literary Review
'Exceptional novel . . . a remarkable accomplishment' Alistair Macleod, author of NO GREAT MISCHIEF
Some books just demand the adjective "wonderful". This is one of them. (The Times)
'the success of Deafening can't be pinned down to just one quality. Itani's beautiful sentences catch the eye immediately, but the years of research behind the book reveal themselves over the course of the pages.' - Edmonton Journal (Edmonton Journal)
'A moving, beautifully descriptive book' - Choice
'A gorgeously moving, old-fashioned novel.' - O, The Oprah Magazine
'Itani's lean, absorbing prose recreates the different kinds of cocoons enfolding her characters. . . . This mesmerizing and quietly remarkable novel captures a young couple bound by a private language of fingers on lips and thoughts unvoiced and unutterable across the rift of the sea.' - Time Out
'Several profound themes-including the curative power of language, the endurance of faith, and the vital role of storytelling in life, love, and war-are expertly enmeshed in this imaginatively crafted tale.' -Elle
'Like Charles Frazier in his massively popular COLD MOUNTAIN, Itani possesses a graceful command of illuminating detail and epic sensibility. . . . Itani may be attempting grand statements about the cacophonous death machinery of war, but what she really accomplishes is a simple story of a gentle soul struggling to accommodate to the hearing world.' - The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
'Deafening . . . is rich in every way. With exquisite crafting, Itani gives Grania a haunting subtle voice with which to tell her story. . . . It is a story for all time.' - The Sunday Oregonian
If there's only one book you read this year, this has to be it (Ireland on Sunday)
'Less a love story than an inventive fusion of a deaf woman's narrative and a soldier's tale, Itani's American debut unfolds with slow, deliberate eloquence and brilliantly described sights and sounds. Jim and Grania pine as wartime separated lovers do, but their story's real strength is their separate, if parallel, struggles to deal with their unforgiving surroundings. Her original treatment of classic wartime romance will make Itani's readers want more.' - Booklist
'Grand achievement' - Edmonton Journal
"It reminds me of that quiet authority I saw in Cold Mountain. I had the same feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's the sort of book that you read and want to ask the author where she learned all this. . . . She's writing about language from the point of view of a deaf woman and she did something the best I've ever seen done anywhere besides James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. She starts out with a very simplistic, naive youthful point of view and it matures with the character. That is so hard to pull off." - Kaye Gibbons, Atlanta Journal Constitution
'Itani has the power not only to make us see and hear, but to believe' - Hamilton Spectator
'Itani takes a subject that could have been treacly and sentimental but makes it into something admirably understated, touching and restrained. She writes lyrically about the magical, mysterious way that language, intimacy and trust enable a deaf woman to hear the sounds of the sea and of music - and of how cataclysmic historical events can touch, shatter and ultimately strengthen even the most interior life.' - People
'Deafening is a slow and graceful read, richly textured, keenly felt and witnessed and at times almost unbearably moving' - Quill & Quire
'Deafening is a war romance that is well researched and ... lively' - The Age, Australia
'Some books just demand the adjective "wonderful". This is one of them.' - The Times
'This is a psychologically rich, deeply atmospheric and exquisitely told story.' - Woman & Home
'A tender tale of love against the odds.' - Company
'A lovely novel about a woman's deafness and the horror of war.' - Daily Mirror
'The novel is studded with haunting perceptions of soundlessness.' - Independent
'A moving, beautifully descriptive book, full of unforgettable images.' Choice Magazine
'Itani has created a wonderfully rich, vigorous and vibrant world. It is a read that will appeal to all the senses.' Ireland on Sunday
'Itani never loses control of her tricky material: the result is an artisistic triumph.' Kirkus Reviews (Kirkus Reviews)
'She's acquired the elusive art of communicating directly with her reader by adopting an unadorned style that is almost Japanese an Zen-like in its suppressed theatricality.' Toronto Globe and Mail (Toronto Globe and Mail)
'Itani is about the only non-deaf novelist who realises the core of a deaf individual is different than that of simply a person who loses hearing. It is this realisation, and her profound respect for it, that makes Deafening unique and astonishingly different.' The Citizen (The Citizen)
'Itani's craft and characterisation glue the reader to the page, because her prime interest is the reader's experience.' Toronto Star (Toronto Star)
'Deafening is rich in every way. Its scope transcends the lives of the characters while bearing witness to the intimate details of their struggles to grasp meaning and share stories ... a story for all time.' The Sunday Oregonian (The Sunday Oregonian)
'This is a magnificent tale, in both breadth and depth, with its battlefield-eye view of the Great War, and its inside-the-head view of a deaf person. At the very least, it is a moving story of love an d war; but it is much more than that, and deserves to be read.' - Oxford Times
'Perhaps for the first time, we have a fully realized fictional deaf heroine. . . . Deafening is not only a captivating novel, but also a great one.' - Literary Review of Canada
'A moving and memorable first novel. . . . Frances Itani is an artist who understands what to include and what to leave out, when to whisper and when to shout. . . . Utterly absorbing.' - Newsday
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