Deafening

By Frances Itani

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: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781555846541

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.

Book preview

Praise for Deafening:

A story of careful, measured emotion . . . There are passages here so beautiful that we can’t help straining to hear more. . . . Showing Grania pull herself into the world of language so deliberately and with such extraordinary concentration, Itani revisits words with an arresting power most of us have forgotten. She wields that power with quiet, remarkable effect.

—Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor

Lean, absorbing prose . . . 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.

—Marion Lignana Rosenberg, Time Out New York

An impressively daring first novel . . . Itani never loses control of her tricky material: the result is an artistic triumph.

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"An astonishing, insightful, compelling story . . . [Deafening] has mesmerized the publishing world, with its duel themes of deafness and war, of isolation. . . . Deafening is a gift for its sheer ineluctable power of perception into the interior life (of deaf and hearing alike). . . . Deafening is so beautifully conceived and executed, leaves such an august message."

—Hannah Merker, Maine Sunday Telegram

"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, author of The Siege

Moving and memorable . . . Itani is an artist who understands what to include and what to leave out, when to whisper and when to shout. . . . Hers is a fiction of quiet but steady revelation. . . . Itani’s writing [is] breathtaking.

—Dan Cryer, Newsday

"[An] earnest study . . . [that] flits through familial love, the mystery of sound, longing, shell shock and an influenza epidemic . . . 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."

—Cherie Parker, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

The novel is studded with haunting perceptions of soundlessness.

—The Independent

"Deafening pulls you slowly but surely into its embrace. It doesn’t shock or try to force the page-turning with exaggerated drama; it tells an intimate tale with clarity and sensitivity. The complexities are found in the themes and characters, not in the narrative, which is understated and direct. . . . Itani is able to convey . . . subtleties because she understands the infinite richness of human expression, making use of that vast vocabulary where silence speaks as loud as words."

—Jessica Slater, Rocky Mountain News

Itani powerfully describes the power of sound, feeling and communication in all its forms.

—The Salt Lake Tribune

"In this profoundly sensitive and convincing portrayal of the world of the deaf, Itani explores the sustaining power of love between generations, between siblings, between friends and between partners in marriage. Deafening encourages us to see further and more deeply into an experience of which few of us have any knowledge. Itani makes us look at a different canvas. We touch the silence and celebrate, anew, the gift of language."

—Commonwealth Writers Prize Citation

"Realms of sound and silence come together with powerful results in Deafening."

—Georgia Rowe, Contra Costa Times

"This exceptional novel moves from the silence of the deaf to the cacophony of ‘the front’ during World War I. In between are the hopes and dreams that define our humanity. There are scenes in Deafening that 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

"Rich in every way. [Deafening’s] scope transcends the lives of the characters while bearing witness to the intimate details of their struggles to grasp meaning and share stories. . . . Deafening is a classically shaped exploration of love and war and the possibilities of language. It is a story for all time."

—Joanna Rose, The Oregonian

"Deafening is a true joy, a moving and observant story of love, sorrow, and survival during the days of World War I. . . . Deafening is clearly a labor of love. . . . [Itani’s] a perceptive, sensitive prose stylist who’s gone the extra mile and more to really live in her characters’ skin and breathe the air of their time. That care comes through on every page."

—The Rake

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.

—The Guardian

"Sincere. Sweet. Un-ironic. These are not words we often associate with successful, innovative, contemporary fiction. Canadian author Frances Itani’s Deafening, though, is fresh and yet surprisingly devoid of the irony, darkness, moodiness or sarcasm that marks so many modern novels. . . . In a way, the book naturalizes deafness: after reading it, deafness no longer looms like a black hole, a lonely state of numbness; instead, it presents itself as just a different kind of language."

—Rachel Aviv, The Providence Journal

"One of the big books of the fall . . . [Itani is] on the brink of a major literary success with Deafening, whose heroine Grania was inspired by her beloved hearing-impaired grandmother."

—Judy Stoffman, Toronto Star

"Deafening is a remarkable and absorbing first novel. Itani’s writing is clearheaded and sure-handed; her strong characters will not leave you."

—Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain

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. . . . Her original treatment of classic wartime romance will make Itani’s readers want more.

—Brendan Driscoll, Booklist

"A phenomenally successful novel . . . Deafening is a deceptively simple story of love and war set in Canada at the turn of the twentieth century. But it has an unusual twist that will hook readers: a fully realized and delightful deaf protagonist."

—Beverly Biderman, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

War and deafness are the twin themes of this psychologically rich, impeccably crafted debut novel set during World War I. . . . A timely reminder of war’s cost, told from an unexpected perspective.

— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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 and war; but it is much more than that, and deserves to be read.

—Philippa Logan, The Oxford Times

"Deafening presents a unique dual adventure, delving simultaneously into the world of deafness and the horrible carnage (and explosive din) of trench warfare."

—Anita Lahey, Quill & Quire

"The literary equivalent of a cool autumn breeze. War and peace, language and silence, and separation and attachment are among the themes embraced in [Deafening]."

—Allison Block, BookPage

"[When] World War I erupts . . . Deafening’s theme of loss deepens; Grania’s loss of hearing takes on new meaning as we see her friends and neighbors experience their own losses during the war. Itani’s beautifully constructed relationships fill these losses with poignancy, leading to some of the book’s finest moments."

—Scott Esposito, Rain Taxi

It is the first time I have read a book on deaf people so well-written.

—John Sarva, SIGN Matters, British Deaf Association

"Deafening is a tribute to Frances Itani’s storytelling skills, an affecting and evocative look at those who inhabited a soundless world during the early years of the last century. Grania, a deaf girl growing up in a small Ontario town, is a truly memorable character and the story of her love for her young soldier husband is brilliantly recounted."

—Richard B. Wright, author of Clara Callan

"Tells a hauntingly familiar story in a rather astounding new way . . . Itani’s theme throughout this quietly lovely novel is the complexity of sound and silence and how they can be both blessing and curse to the humans who experience them. . . . Deafening is a . . . graceful read, richly textured, keenly felt and witnessed, and at times almost unbearably moving."

—Bronwyn Drainie, Quill & Quire

Deafening

DEAFENING

Frances Itani

Copyright © 2003 by Frances Itani

Copyright © 2004 by Itani Writes, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc.,

841 Broadway New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Itani, Frances, 1942–

Deafening / by Frances Itani.

p. cm.

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4654-1

1. World War, 1914–1918—Fiction. 2. Deaf women—Fiction. 3. Ontario—Fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.3.I83D43 2003

813'.54—dc21                                   2003045108

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

For my son, Russell Satoshi Itani.

And for my remarkable Grandmother

Gertrude (Freeman) Stoliker (1898-1987).

And for the nine and a half million who died

serving their countries 1914-1919.

The Artificial Method is a system founded by one Heinicke, a Saxon, who pursued successfully the occupations of farmer, soldier, schoolmaster, and chanter. . . . This system aims at developing, by unnatural processes, the power of speech, and the educating of the ear. It takes a much longer time to educate the pupils by this system than by other methods, and more painful efforts on the part of the pupil. Indeed in many cases it is so painful to the poor deaf-mute as to cause blood to issue from the mouth.

Canadian Illustrated News, August 1, 1874

Magic Lantern Views:

At first I saw the picture of Hon. R.L. Borden and our teacher told us that he is the Premier of Canada. The next picture I saw was King Albert I of Belgium. Then another one was King George V. He looks like the Czar of Russia. I saw the pictures of some German buildings. One of them was a Cathedral on which the English soldiers had dropped bombs. They did right, as many Germans dropped bombs in England. They were doing just the same, and not unjustly. I saw Germans riding in carriages through Belgium. They were boastful as they did not ask the people’s permission. Many soldiers marched on the road.

Gertie Freeman

The Canadian, May 1, 1915,

Belleville, The Ontario School for the Deaf

Deafening

1902

YOUR NAME, MAMO SAYS. "THIS IS THE IMPORTANT WORD. IF YOU CAN say your name, you can tell the world who you are."

Graw . . .

"Sounds like claw. Like the claw on the cat that prowls at the back. The one your father won’t allow in the hotel—or in the house either, for that matter."

Grania has been watching closely but she’s not certain what her grandmother has just said.

Claw, Mamo says again. Watch my throat, watch my lips.

"Claw."

Mamo nods. Good. I believe this is coming from your memory. ‘Graw’ is the part that means love. Now, say Graw - nee - ya. Mamo bears her teeth. Her lips shape the child’s name in separate parts. The way Grania sections an orange and puts the segments back together again to make the orange whole.

Graw—nee—ya. Grania bares her teeth and Mamo laughs.

Is that what I look like? Don’t try so hard. Say it easily. Graw- nya. Over and over. Clearly and well.

But her older brother Bernard calls her Grainy. Has done, since the week she was born, and won’t stop now just because the scarlet fever she had last winter made her deaf. Bernard’s lips smile when he says the end of her name.

With her sister Tress, it’s different again. When Tress calls her ‘Graw,’ her jaw drops. Tress and Grania have already begun to make up their own language, with their hands.

Mother’s lips make a straight line. She does not smile or laugh when she says that Grania must pay attention every second, every minute. If she doesn’t, people will think she’s stupid. She has to be ready all the time.

Ready? For what?

To break through the silence.

But the silence also protects. Grania knows. Being inside the silence is like being under water. Only when she wants to surface, only then does she come to the top.

Mamo calls the family together: Mother, Father, Bernard, Tress, even Patrick, who has only recently begun to speak, himself.

Don’t treat her differently, Mamo tells them. "Talk to her the way you did before she was sick. Include her in everything. Don’t leave her out. She may be only five years old but never stop speaking to her, whether she understands or not. Encourage her to talk back. In a month, she’ll be six and she is going to need schooling."

Mother has not made up her mind about schooling. Twice a week, she goes to the Catholic church and prays that Grania’s hearing will come back. Even though the priest shakes his head, Mother has not given up hope.

Father looks at his third child, his red-haired daughter, her brows scrunched, eyes intent, her glance flitting from one pair of lips to another. Father tries to keep his sorrow at bay. He knows that the child will never hear. Dr. Clark’s diagnosis has been emphatically clear.

Patrick, the baby, walks from one pair of knees to another, balancing as he goes.Talk, he says, imitating Mamo. "Talk, talk."

I

1903–1905

Chapter 1

A deaf child will learn 300 to 500 words in a year if at all intelligent. First, the child is taught the sounds and then how to combine them."

Lecture, The Toronto Fair

Deseronto, Ontario

GO TO MY ROOM. MAMO IS POINTING TO THE FLOOR ABOVE. BRING THE package on my bureau.

Grania watches her grandmother’s lips. She understands, pushes aside the heavy tapestry curtain that keeps the draught from blowing up the stairs, and runs up to the landing. She pauses long enough to glance through the only window in the house that is shaped like a porthole, even though it’s at the back of the house and looks over land, not water. She peers down into the backyard, sees the leaning fence, the paddock and, over to the right, the drive sheds behind Father’s hotel. Far to the left, over the top of the houses on Mill Street, she can see a rectangle of field that stretches in the opposite direction, towards the western edge of town. A forked tree casts a long double shadow that has begun its corner-to-corner afternoon slide across the field. Remembering her errand, Grania pulls back, runs to Mamo’s room, finds the package tied up in a square of blue cloth and carries it, wrapped, to the parlour. Mamo pulls a low chair over beside her rocker. Her rocker moves with her, out to the veranda, back to the parlour, out to the veranda again.

Sit here, her lips say.

Grania watches. Her fingers have already probed the package on the way down the stairs, and she knows it is a book. At a nod from Mamo she unties the knot and folds back the cloth. The first thing she sees on the cover is a word, a word picture. The word is made of yellow rope and twines its way across the deck of a ship where a bearded captain steers and a barefoot boy sits on a rough bench beside him. The boy is reading a book that is identical to the one in Grania’s hands—it has the same cover. The sea and sky and sails in the background are soft blues and creams and browns.

Grania knows the rope letters because, after the scarlet fever, she relearned the alphabet with Mamo. The yellow letters curve and twist in a six-letter shape.

"Sunday, Mamo says. The title of the book is Sunday but you may keep the book in your room and look at it any time you want. Every day, we will choose a page and you will learn the words under the picture. Yes?" Eyebrows up. A question.

The book is for her. This she understands. Yes. Her fingers roam the cover but she has to be still or she will give Mamo the fidgets.

There are many words in the book, Mamo says. So many words. She taps her fingertips against the cover. Some day, you will know them all. She mutters to herself, If you can say a word, you can use it, not knowing how much Grania has understood. We will do this, word by word—until your parents make up their minds to do something about your schooling. You’ve already lost one year, and a valuable part of another.

Mamo’s finger points at the book and her eyes give the go-ahead flicker. Grania opens the stiff cover and turns the blank sheet that follows. The word Sunday is on the inside, too, but this time its letters are dark and made of twigs instead of yellow rope. The page that follows the twigs is in colour.

A brown and white calf has stopped on a grassy path and is staring at a girl. The girl is approaching from the opposite direction. She seems to be the same size and age as Grania; she might be seven or eight. Only the back of her can be seen—blue dress, black stockings, black shoes. Her hat, daisies tumbling from the crown, droops from one hand. A doll wearing a red dress dangles limply from the other. The doll’s hair is as red as Grania’s. No one in the picture is moving. The calf looks too startled to lift a hoof.

Grania points to two words beneath the picture and looks at Mamo’s mouth.

BOTH AFRAID, Mamo reads.

The first sound erupts from Grania’s lips. BO, she says. BO.

Mamo makes the TH shape with her tongue. BO—TH.

Grania tries over and over, watching Mamo’s lips. TH is not so easy. She already knows AFRAID. Afraid is what she is every night in the dark.

Practise, Mamo tells her. She lifts herself out of the rocker, leaving behind the scent of Canada Bouquet, the perfume she chose because of its name and because she chose this country and because of the stench of the ship she left behind many years ago, and because Mr. Eaton sends the perfume from his mail order catalogue in tiny bottles that cost forty-one cents. The air flutters like a rag as she walks away.

Grania breathes deeply, inhaling the scent. She sniffs the closed book and squeezes it to her as if it might get away. Both and afraid roll together, thick and half-new on her tongue. She runs upstairs to the room she shares with her older sister. Tress is stretched out reading her own book, The Faeries. Sometimes, Mamo and Tress read aloud to each other, after Tress walks home from school. Grania watches their lips, but she doesn’t know the stories.

Say, Grania says to Tress. She points to the words beneath the picture. Say in my ear.

Tress’s glance takes in the new book. She knows it is a gift from Mamo. What’s the use? she says. You won’t hear. She shakes her head, No.

Shout, says Grania.

You still won’t hear.

Shout in my ear. She narrows her voice so that Tress will understand that she is not going to go away. She turns her head to the side and feels Tress’s cupped hands and two explosive puffs of air.

Tress listens as Grania practises, BOTHAFRAID BOTHAFRAID BOTHAFRAID.

Pretty good, her mouth says. She shrugs and goes back to The Faeries.

Supper, like all meals, is eaten at the big oval table—the family-only table—in the private corner of the hotel dining room, next door. All through the meal Grania thinks of the brown and white calf and the girl in the blue dress. She sees them in her head when she walks along Main Street with Mamo in the early evening, and when she lies in her bed later, eyes open in the dark.

Bothafraid, her voice says softly. She doesn’t want Tress, across the room, to hear. A breeze wisps through the window sash above her sister’s bed.

Tress’s window faces the slope of roof that tilts towards the upper balcony of the hotel. From up here, house and hotel appear to be joined, though they are not; there is a roofed, open passageway between. A second bedroom window looks over Main Street and the Bay of Quinte, a large bay that slips in from the vast great Lake Ontario, which is part of the border between Canada and United States. A single maple tree grows up past this front window of the girls’ room.

Almost every family activity takes place on the short stretch of road that is the Main Street of town. To the east, not far past Naylor’s Theatre, Main Street ends where land meets bay. The western end of Main, where Grania lives, tips up to join the old York Road, now Dundas Street, which leads west through Mohawk Indian lands, and on to the city of Belleville, twenty miles farther along the bay. To the east, the same road passes through the northern part of town and leads to Napanee, Kingston, and the St. Lawrence River. Much of the town of Deseronto lies below this road, on the edge of the bay.

The town is like an overgrown village, really, but the Rathbun industries have been here for years and have made it a company town that boasts a railway, and steamers, and numerous enterprises sprawled along the waterfront. Many of the factories and stacks of lumber, the mill, the coal sheds, the railway car shops, the tracks, and the turntable for the engines, lie between Main Street and the shore. On both sides of Main there is a mixture of houses and places of business: Telegraph Office, confectioner, baker, grocer around the corner, Chinese laundry with steam-covered windows, gentlemen’s tailor, general store, Tribune printing office, post office with its high clock tower, barber on the other side of the street, Naylor’s Theatre towards the end, harness shop, fire hall and hardware. On the back streets are the undertaker, more grocers and bakeries, police and library in one building—library is where Aunt Maggie works—community halls and churches, and the billiard hall. Mamo names the buildings when she walks with Grania through the town, but Grania knows that she is permitted to visit only grocer, butcher and post office, when she is on her own.

Father’s hotel is always busy because it is on the corner of Mill Street and Main, directly across from the railway station and the wharf, where the steamers dock.

In the girls’ upstairs room in the house beside the hotel, there is no window over Grania’s bed. Her side is wall. Wall on the right, windows front and left. She has learned right and left from Mamo. She thinks of the Sunday book and the new words beneath the picture. Neither calf nor girl will ever move towards each other. They will be waiting for her when she wakes in the morning and opens the cover. She will stare at them and there they will be, face to face, looking at each other on the page.

You’re smart, Mamo tells her. They are on the veranda and Mamo has brought the rocker outside. Mamo is relentless. She articulates firmly and carefully into the air, and Grania is expected to keep up. You could read lips before you were deaf. When your parents wanted to talk—grownup talk—they had to turn their backs to whisper because you were so nosy. Do what you’ve always done. Before you were sick. You’re the one in the family who sees.

Grania watches Mamo point to her own eyes. Since you were a tiny baby, you’ve seen what’s around you. As soon as you could raise your head, you peered up over the side of your cradle. She laughs, thinking of this.

Grania knows when Mamo is talking about baby times. She can tell from the softening in Mamo’s face.

Did I have thick sense?

Thick what?

When I was a baby. Aunt Maggie says I have thick sense. I know what she will do before she knows.

Mamo smiles. When she smiles there is an up-and-down line between her eyebrows. I see. She holds her arms open and Grania walks into them and waits while Mamo smacks a kiss onto her forehead.

Mamo turns sideways from the waist and draws a six in the air with her index finger. Grania watches the number assume its invisible shape.

Six. Six—TH sense, not thick. If you have it, you shouldn’t be talking about it.

Now Mamo’s pointing finger makes a circle. I’m going to turn you around—keep your eyes open, wide open. When you stop, tell me what you see. Understand?

A game. Grania understands. She feels Mamo’s hands on her shoulders and allows herself to be turned. Once. Twice. When she stops she is facing the end of her own veranda, looking between the pillars that support the hotel balcony, a dozen feet away.

She turns back to Mamo.

Now look at me, Mamo says. Use voice, no hand signals. Keep the language you already have. What do you see?

Wood post. This comes out high.

Bring your voice down. Mamo lowers her palm through the air. She’s using hand signals. Colour?

White. Uncle Am and boys painted. Two of her cousins had come to town from a farm near Bompa Jack’s, to help paint. That night, they were allowed to sleep in an upstairs room of Father’s hotel.

"The boys painted."

Not Bernard. He worked in dining room on paint day.

What else?

Man.

"A man. Who?"

Mr. Conlin. Beside telegraph office. She has also seen the Telegraph sign nailed between two poles, but she doesn’t mention this.

Wearing?

Grania shrugs.

Look again.

One more look. She tries to focus, remember. Turns back. "Funny hat. He wears the hat inside the post office where he works."

Good girl. Colour?

Like coal bin. The coal bin.

What else?

Hat is round like Uncle Am’s but with a hole punched in.

I know, Mamo says—to herself this time—she’s forgetting the game. He won’t replace it. He’s too proud. She sits forward. The fight was a few years back and he won’t buy a new hat.

Fight?

Ah, you read my lips even when I talk to myself. He helped your father get some rowdies out. They came in on the steamer. They weren’t Irish, those rowdies. Well, they did manage to get them out, sure enough. She leans back again in the rocker. Someone must have spilled salt that day.

"Salt?

Means a fight. Never mind. Look again. Is there a band on the hat? Mamo’s fingers curl to create the width of a band. More hand signals.

Dark. Grania’s hands instinctively cross in front of her face, semaphore flags. She cannot know that two years later she will be taught the same sign.

What is Mr. Conlin doing?

This time, Grania doesn’t need a second look. Wait for Cora to pass because Cora is nosy. Then chew tobacco and go back to post office. The post office.

You’re the one who’s the nosy parker.

Jack Conlin turns in their direction, and waves.

At night, Grania tiptoes across the rag rug, counting six steps between beds. She crouches by her sister’s bed, waiting. Tress has told her that the springs creak and will give them both away if Grania climbs in beside her. Mother and Father sleep in the next room and Mother will be listening.

No talking, Mother has warned. Grania is not to leave her bed. It was to Tress that she said this when she came to say goodnight, but Grania saw the frown on Mother’s face and read her lips before she finished speaking.

There is something else Grania has to consider in the darkness—the walls. Aunt Maggie, who lives with Uncle Am in the tower apartment above the post office, told Grania that the walls have ears. Mamo agreed that this was true, and she and Aunt Maggie smiled while Grania weighed the information. Every night now when Grania goes to bed, she scrunches as far away from the wall as she can because she does not want the wall to hear. She does not want to fall into the place where the wall swallows sound.

A shadow appears at the front window where the branches of the maple stretch up. Things that move, things that don’t move. The shadow slides across the oval mirror with the reed trim, and across the framed picture of daffodils. It slides past the washstand and jug, and above the bureau and over the sampler Mother stitched when she was fourteen years old, lines from The Breastplate of Saint Patrick. God’s eye for my seeing, God’s ear for my hearing.

The shadow slips out of the room. Watch for things that move, Mamo has taught Grania. Watching will keep you safe.

Shadows sometimes take Grania by surprise. Under the moon there are shadows. There are times when she walks outside with Mamo or Bernard in the evening, and electric lights shine out of a window and make not one, but two shadows that glide beside her. She is startled by this, and keeps a close watch until the shadows merge again into one.

From her crouched position on the floor she allows herself to sink to the rag rug. In the same movement—holding back, even as her body leans forward—her shoulder nudges the edge of her sister’s bed. Tress’s hand slides out from beneath the sheets and slips into her own. Tress shifts some of the blankets over the side and bunches them to cover Grania’s shoulders. The two hold hands and sleep, one on, one off the bed, all through the night.

Mamo takes her by the hand and leads her to the clock in the front hall, the one that was carried in the burlap bag with the wide shoulder strap, the bag stitched by Grandfather O’Shaughnessy himself. He carried the clock all the way from the beautiful land called Ireland, where he and Mamo were born in the same town, and grew up and loved each other and married. When Grandfather died on the ship and was buried at sea near the coast of their new country, it had fallen to Mamo to carry the clock. When they reached Quebec, she and her four children, two daughters and two sons—Grania’s mother, Agnes, the eldest—hoisted the O’Shaughnessy trunk, the bundles, the clock in the burlap bag, and left the ship. They staggered to shore while their legs gave out beneath them. As weak as they were, they were glad to have their feet on land, even though they were facing a second journey. They travelled over land to Mystic, Quebec, where Mamo had a cousin, the only person she knew from the old country. It was later, when Mamo’s sons were old enough to work and her daughters to marry, that they moved to Deseronto on Lake Ontario. All of this happened before Grania was born.

Mamo gave the O’Shaughnessy clock to Mother and Father when they were married. The clock is as tall as Grania’s arm is long, fingertip to shoulder, and stands on the pine table in the front hall. It has two short posts that come out at the top, posts that did not snap off during the long sea journey. Mamo gave away the clock but not the burlap bag, which is stored in the trunk along with the small wooden cross she placed there the day her husband was buried at sea.

Mamo stops the clock and turns it towards her, so that only she can see its face. She places Grania’s hand against its side. The hand accepts smoothness, cool and polished wood.

"I want you to feel time, Mamo tells her. If my hand can feel the chimes and the ticking, so can yours."

Grania watches Mamo’s lips and stares into the shadowy end of the hall while her hand accepts the pulse of the clock. She feels the ticking against the base of her fingers and into the joints where fingers meet palm. Mamo stops the pendulum. The pulse stops and Grania looks up to Mamo’s face, and Mamo resets the hands of the clock.

Ready? Count. How many chimes?

New sensation. Th-th-th—a determined message, arriving through the skin. It stops.

Grania has been counting. Five. Five o’clock.

Clever girl. Try again.

Mamo signals.

Not, says Grania. Not sounding.

Good. Now?

Three. Each chime pushes into her hand more strongly than the chime before.

Mamo puts a key into the face of the clock and sets it for the last time. She signals, eyes laughing.

Twelve, says Grania, without using her hand.

Monkey, says Mamo. Now you’re guessing. But you’re right. And being right has nothing to do with your thick sense.

Father stays in his hotel office most of the time, because he has business things to do. It is hard work to own a hotel, he says. Everything must run smoothly and the guests have to be satisfied and the food must be good. Mother and her helper, Mrs Brant, cook the food. Father sits at the head of the family table in the hotel dining room during dinner and supper but he is never there for breakfast. Father calls himself a wine merchant and sometimes he smells like wine, or damp fruit. His smells are different from everyone else’s. He has a moustache that curls at each end and smells like tobacco mixed with wax. He wears a ribbed vest with six buttons that Grania has counted, and a watch on a chain that is hooked through number five buttonhole on the vest. Father has broad thick hands, Irish hands that know how to work, he says. He has wavy hair and he wears a silver ring on the little finger of his right hand. One eyelid droops and he says that it is lazy. He has a brother in town—Uncle Am, the caretaker of the big post office building halfway along Main Street. Father’s town friends are Uncle Am and Jack Conlin, the Post Master.

Father wears a bow tie, like his own father Bompa Jack when Bompa Jack gets dressed up. Father has a new puppy, Carlow, who is allowed to sleep in Father’s office. Carlow has a brown patch that circles his left eye. His legs are white, and his back is brown. Grania is permitted to take Carlow outside at the back of the house, as long as they stay inside the fenced area. Carlow is never permitted upstairs in the bedrooms.

Grania shouts commands to Carlow. She makes up sounds and he obeys. But he does not obey Tress or Bernard or Patrick. It is Grania’s voice that Carlow understands. Grania protects Carlow from the cat that prowls at the back. The cat that lives in the drive sheds.

Sometimes, when Grania is in the yard, Mrs Brant opens the loading window at the back of the hotel where she works in the kitchen. If she sees Grania, she slides two raisin cookies across the flat ledge, one for Grania and one for Carlow. Mrs Brant is a Mohawk woman and she has dark hair and dark eyes, and a kind round face. She puts a finger to her lips when she slides the cookies across, and Grania knows that this is a secret between them. Grania loves Mrs Brant.

Father makes certain that his children don’t make a ruckus when they are playing, and that they know their manners at the table. Use your knife and fork, he tells them. Don’t chew with your mouth open. It’s rude.

What?

Not what, Grania, pardon. Grania turns away, her timing split-second. What she can’t see she can’t be expected to understand.

Father’s moustache hangs over his upper lip and sometimes Grania doesn’t know what he is saying. She peers and strains to see, but when his words are hidden she has to ask Tress what he has said. Father doesn’t like being asked to repeat his words. On certain days, he goes to Grew the barber on the other side of Main Street and along the boardwalk, to have his moustache trimmed. On those days Grania understands. But soon, the moustache grows thick and covers his lip again. Even so, Father sometimes says to Grania, You don’t miss much, my darling. And that she understands.

Grania dreams about Father standing in the doorway of his office. One of his large Irish hands, the hand with the ring, rests against his watch. Father talks to her in the dream and his face is troubled because he thinks Grania is lost. She sees him but he can’t see her. His lips are moving but the moustache hangs over them and she does not understand. She is clenched with fear and runs towards him but he still doesn’t see her. His lips stretch and distort. He gives up on the speaking language and tries to signal with his hands. But he does not know the hand language—not the one invented by Grania and Tress. And though he looks everywhere, he still can’t see her.

Father loves Grania. She knows this in the dream. But because he is so sure that she is lost, he turns away and goes back inside his office. Grania is desperate now. She shouts after him, the way she shouts at Carlow, but Father does not turn around. Carlow bounds out through the office door and leaps at her, wagging his tail. Carlow always understands Grania’s voice.

A warm night. A soft breeze lifts in from the bay. Hotel guests, the women, are seated on the upstairs veranda only a few feet across the roof from where the sisters lie in their beds. It is long past the supper hour and the women occupy the row of rattan chairs that face the water. Directly below, on the street-level veranda, their husbands keep their own company, drinks in hand, spittoons at their feet. Bernard, the only one of the children old enough to help in the hotel in the evenings, is working at the desk in the lobby.

As soon as Mother says good night and shuts the bedroom door, the hand signal comes from Tress, palm held high for

Reviews for Deafening

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.