Deafening (Paperback)

The point of view alternates between Grania and Jim, once Jim goes off to war, and important themes--war and peace, life and death, love and friendship, and strength and dependence--weave and develop throughout their contrasting worlds, Grania at home and Jim at the front in Belgium. Itani develops these age-old themes in new ways, sensitively incorporating them with the imagery of sounds and silence, sight and shadows, action and inaction, images we have come to associate with the life Grania and Jim share. In Jim's traumatic world, sound becomes overwhelming: pounding guns, explosions, screams of agony from wounded soldiers. As a result of his life with Grania, however, he is also acutely sensitive to what he sees, discovering, ironically, that it is the hands of the dead and dying that communicate most vividly because they "revealed the final argument: clenched in anger, relaxed in acquiescence, seized in a posture of surprise or forgiveness."

The subordinate characters further flesh out the themes. The friendship and interdependence of Jim and Irish, his best friend parallel the love and support Grania has received from her sister, her remarkable grandmother, and her deaf friends. Grania gains strength through them and is able to give support and strength to others when they need her, just as Jim gains strength from his relationship with Irish and continues to rescue the wounded and dying. As the reader comes to know Grania and Jim and the love they feel for each other, Grania's silent but active world becomes more and more understandable to the reader. Ultimately, the reader has to agree with Grania when she declares, ironically, "Sound is always more important to the hearing."

With her husband Jim's departure for the war, the point of view alternates between Grania and Jim, and important themes-war and peace, life and death, love and friendship, and strength and dependence-weave and develop throughout their contrasting worlds, Grania at home and Jim at the front in Belgium. Itani develops these age-old themes in new ways, sensitively incorporating them with the imagery of sounds and silence, sight and shadows, action and inaction, images we have come to associate with the life Grania and Jim share. In Jim's traumatic world, sound becomes overwhelming--pounding guns, explosions, screams--but as a result of his life with Grania, he is also acutely sensitive to what he sees.

The subordinate characters further flesh out the themes. The friendship and interdependence of Jim and Irish, his best friend, parallel the love and support Grania has received from her sister, her remarkable grandmother, and her deaf friends. As the reader comes to know Grania and Jim and the love they feel for each other, Grania's silent but active world becomes more and more understandable to the reader. Ultimately, the reader has to agree with Grania when she declares, ironically, "Sound is always more important to the hearing." Mary Whipple

Grania must learn to live away from her loving family, but she is lonely for the company of her sister, Tressa and the secret language they shared. Grania is a bright student and excels in school, learning both sign language and speech, and after graduation takes a job at the school hospital, where she meets the kind-hearted Jim. When Grania falls in love with Jim, her life seems complete, but the First World War soon tears them apart and sweeps Jim across the Atlantic into the horrors of the Western Front and trench warfare. At the Western Front, Jim is tested to his limit as he and his buddy Irish - both stretcher-bearers - recover the crushed bodies of their comrades.

Apart from her husband for two years, Grania feels "a loneliness so brittle, she believed that she would break in two," and she is forced to cope with many domestic dramas, both large and small, of life at home. The way she sees is divided, "into things that move and things that don't move," and when Kenan, her brother-in-law and childhood companion, returns from the Front, battle scarred, and speechless, Grania's helps him regain his voice through altruism, selflessness, and love. She is a woman who knows how to listen even though she cannot hear.

While Grania is destined for a life of silence, Jim is "deafened" by the noise of war. Jack gradually comes to learn the gap between what happens and what is understood, what is there and what is not, and while trying to survive in the trenches, the "sounds knock him over, and block all thought." The sounds "seep into the body like deadly gas, and seep into everything around until there is no rift or fissure left unfilled." Jack searches for Grania - her face, eyes, lips and self - in the words of letters that he thinks of but never writes.

Through Itani's vivid imagery and lyrical prose, we enter Grania's world as she tries to communicate where sound exists only in the margins. Itani also doesn't shy away from showing the horrors of war - the distorted bodies, the yellowish-grey mud, and the shells that burst with a deafening bang. The book is totally rich in time frame and location, and is written with all the lyrical language and slow character development that one can hope for in literary fiction. Graceful and precise, Deafening is a deeply moving journey through the strands of strength and vulnerability that weave heart and spirit together. The horrific images of war are not what makes the pages fly by, rather, it is the unfolding of the tale itself, along with the lush writing and the accretion of character that gently, yet persistently, pull the reader in. Mike Leonard July 04.