Deafening
Frances Itani
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
3.78
· 18 ratings · 71 pages · Published: 01 Aug 2005
After graduation Grania stays on to work at the school, and it is there that she meets Jim Lloyd, a hearing man. In wonderment the two begin to create a new emotional vocabulary that encompasses both sound and silence. But just 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 war of attrition, Jim and Grania's letters back and forth-both real and imagined-attempt to sustain their young love in a world as brutal as it is beautiful. Frances Itani's depiction of a world where sound exists only in the margins is a singular feat in literary fiction, a place difficult to leave and even harder to forget.
A magnificent tale of love and war, Deafening is finally an ode to language-how it can console, imprison, and liberate, and how it alone can bridge vast chasms of geography and experience.
Tagged as:
- romance 4
- historical 3
- historical fiction 3
- war/big battles 3
- world war I 3
- literary fiction 2
- 20th century 2
- on the move 2
- family 2
- coming of age 1
- drama 1
- military, war & conflict 1
- action / adventure 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- book 1
- adult fiction 1