Deafening: A Novel

Written by Frances Itani

Narrated by Lorraine Hamelin

The internationally bestselling, “gorgeously moving, old-fashioned novel” about a woman’s life, loves, and self-discovery on the eve the Great War (O, The Oprah Magazine).

Grania O’Neill, the daughter of hardworking Irish hoteliers in small-town Ontario, is five years old when she emerges from a bout of scarlet fever profoundly deaf—suddenly sealed off from the world that was just beginning to open for her. While her guilt-plagued mother cannot accept it, Grania finds allies in her grandmother and her older sister, Tress. It isn’t until she’s enrolled in the Ontario School for the Deaf in Belleville, that Grania truly begins to thrive. In time, she falls for Jim Lloyd, a hearing man with whom Grania creates a new emotional vocabulary that encompasses both sound and silence.

But just two weeks after their wedding, Jim leaves 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 hopeful.

Winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize, Frances Itani’s debut novel is a “brilliantly lucid and masterfully sustained” ode to language—how it can console, imprison, and liberate—with “the integrity of an achieved artistic vision, the kind of power that is generally associated with the gracious, crystalline prose of Grace Paley, the flagrantly good, good lines of Robert Lowell and W. H. Auden’s poetry” (Kaye Gibbons, author of A Virtuous Woman).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: May 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543611151

Frances Itani

FRANCES ITANI has written eighteen books. Her novels include That’s My Baby; Tell, shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Requiem, chosen by the Washington Post as one of the top fiction titles of 2012; Remembering the Bones, published internationally and shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; and the #1 bestseller Deafening, which won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Published in seventeen territories, Deafening was also selected for CBC’s Canada Reads. A three-time winner of the CBC Literary Prize, Frances Itani is a Member of the Order of Canada and the recipient of a 2019 Library and Archives Canada Scholars Award. She lives in Ottawa.

Reviews for Deafening

[brendaough · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a very beautiful novel which follows the life of a young girl who has been made deaf as a child by scarlet fever. The book follows her journey and stay at a school for the deaf. Later she marries a man who goes off to fight in the trenches of Normandy. The story moves back and forth from the devastation of war to Canada where the young woman fights her own battle against the deadly flu epidemic of 1919. I enjoyed this book very much; wonderful characters and the scenes of the trench warfare were heartbreaking.

[steller0707 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A puff of air, an aroma or a movement in the corner of her eye - these are the signals that something is happening around her. For Grania (Graw - née - a) is deaf as a result of a bout with scarlet fever when she was a child.

Grania has a protective mother (who feels guilty for her daughter's deafness), and a loving grandmother and sister who help her. She is sheltered until she is nine, when it is was apparent that she needed schooling. She is sent to the Ontario School for the Deaf 20 miles away. She thrives there, meets her best friend, Fry, and her love, Jim. When WWI intervenes the lives of everyone, including Grania, are turned upside down.

Set in Canada as well as World War I France Deafening is well-researched, with insights into what it might be like to live without sound.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The amount of research that went into this novel is obvious from the beginning: Frances Itani is meticulous in trying to accurately portray the smallest details of the lives of her characters. The story is moving - cataloguing the damage caused by the First World War to the lives of the characters and describing the difficulties faced by a deaf person in a hearing world.

[gardenreader-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Itani masterfully describes the world of a deaf person - Grania - and how her family deals with her deafness. The second half of the book is partially from Grania's husband, Jim's point of view while he is at war (WWI) and is particularly graphic. Not for the squeamish reader.

[pgchuis · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hard for me to give a star rating as I skimmed the whole of the book after Grania and Jim got married. I found the part I read properly mildly interesting and it was a pleasure to read of a deaf child being sent away to a special school and settling in and doing well there and learning to sign and speak. Jim seemed quite sweet, but he was a bit of a surprise as we had skipped over most of Grania's teenage years. After that it turned into a WWI novel, a genre I find too upsetting to read any more, so I skimmed it to the end. The friend who lent it to me loves this novel, but she is a braver reader than me. I wish we had found out how Jim and Grania's marriage fared after his return.

[librarycin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4.25 starsGrania 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 with her grandmother and sister. I really liked this and I don't know why it took me so long to read it.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This story is filled with such tragedy. In Part I Grania O'Neill is just five years old when she loses her hearing after a bout with scarlet fever. Her family is desperate to make her normal, to help her fit in the the hearing world. Her grandmother and sister devote themselves to helping her cope. When it is obvious she can't, Grania, at nine years old, is sent away to a boarding school for the deaf. Part II covers one year. The year is 1915 and Grania is now 19 and working at Gibson Hospital. She meets and marries a hearing man, Jim Lloyd. In Part III Jim has gone to help in the war effort as a medic. The violence he encounters at this time assaults his senses to the core, but it is the thought of Grania and their love that sustains him. Part IIII (that is deliberate) covers 1917 - 1918. Jim has been gone for two years and Grania remains vigilant for his letters and watchful of the changing war efforts. The book ends with Part V, 1919 and the end of the war. So much has changed during this time. So many people have died and relationships are forever changed. I won't spoil the end except to say it was beautifully written. A book I couldn't put down.

[spacepotatoes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was hoping to enjoy this and be moved by it more than I was in the end. It was well written and the first portion of the novel was very engaging, the characters were likeable and I found Grania's experience growing up deaf very interesting. Once the story shifted to WWI and Jim's (Grania's husband) experiences in France as a stretcher bearer, I lost my connection. I'm not sure how to describe it, the only thing I can think of is that Itani's way of writing the WWI experience didn't feel very authentic. Sometimes it felt like things cobbled together from various history books. I think I also had a hard time caring about Jim because the story doesn't really say too much about how his relationship with Grania developed before they got married and his voice never felt totally distinct from hers. Overall, it was an enjoyable read and there were several touching moments in it, but it dragged after the first third and never completely picked up again.

[ldvoorberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[mbergman_15 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found it difficult to keep reading this book. It wasn't bad, just not particularly engaging. It seems like it could have been. It was the story of a Canadian girl who goes deaf after an illness at the age of 5 in the early 20th century. She eventually marries a hearing young man who goes to Europe as a stretcher bearer in WWI. I think there may be things going in this book regarding the relationship between the man's experience as in the war & hers as a deaf woman, but I didn't get it.

[seasidereader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[niecierpek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A lyrically and thoughtfully written story of Grania, a girl and then a young woman, born in Ontario, Canada, at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, who lost her hearing after surviving scarlet fever at the age of five. At first, we are led through her childhood, agonies of adaptation, and her schooling. When things seem to start working out for her the First World War breaks out, and when it is almost finished Spanish flu sweeps through Europe and North America taking its toll.There are many parallels drawn between the silence of the deaf and the deafening noise of the war, between the psychological and physical devastation of the war, disability and severe sickness.

[blackbelt2librarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An enjoyable book overall. I loved reading about Grania's time at her school, and when she fell in love with Jim. There was too much devoted to Jim's experience in Europe, but it didn't take away from the book too much. I have relatives who are deaf and I've also worked a little bit with the National Theater of the Deaf...I found this book interesting & like a small window into deaf history & culture

[miche11e_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Grania was born in Deseronto Ontario and became deaf at age 5 following scarlet fever. She evenutally goes to the School for the Deaf in Belleville. She meets and marries and young man, who goes away to fight in the war for 3 years. He comes home.That's the story. The descriptions of being deaf were the most interesting parts of the book. Otherwise, it didn't much appeal to me, but I did read the entire book.