Deafening by: Frances Itani
review by: Prof. Diana Postlethwaite, Eng. dept.
Deafening is a novel about silence, sound, love and the ways humans communicate. Set in Canada in the early years of the twentieth century, the book follows its central character, Grania O'Neill, from early childhood through her marriage to Jim Lloyd, a young army medical corps recruit. Grania is deaf, and Itani dedicates Deafening to her grandmother, who lost her hearing in infancy and went on to raise eleven hearing children. To write this novel, she studied sign language, interviewing deaf people in order better to understand what it is to live within silence.Much of the story takes place in a small Ontario town, brought into direct contact with global events by World War One. Jim's searing experiences in the self-contained universe of war are given their counterparts in Grania's equally intense experiences in the self-contained universe of the deaf. Itani wants to take her readers inside of these two--"deafening"--universes, and to show us what they have in common.