Deaf Sentence: A Novel

• Publisher:   Viking Adult
• Number Of Pages:   304
• Publication Date:   2008-09-18
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0670019925
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780670019922

A witty, tender novel about the travails of old middle age, from a Booker finalist Desmond Bates is a recently retired linguistics professor vexed by his encroaching deafness and at loose ends in his personal life. Without the purposeful routine of the academic year, he finds his role reduced to that of escort and house-husband while his wife’s late-flowering career as the owner of a home design store flourishes. The monotony of his days is relieved only by wearisome journeys to London to check on the welfare of his querulous, elderly father, an ex-dance musician. But these discontents are nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. It is through his deafness that Desmond inadvertently gets involved with a young woman who seeks his support in matters academic and not so academic; and whose wayward and unpredictable behavior threatens to destabilize his life completely. Deaf Sentence is a funny, moving account of one man’s effort to come to terms with deafness and death, aging and mortality, the comedy and tragedy of human life.

Great book that captures the humor and the pathos of hearing loss. Some of the narrator's observations made me believe that he had witnessed conversations between my husband and myself! Every character, with the possible exception of the graduate student Alex, seemed real. Everyday situations made me laugh, and a few made me cry. The visit to Auschwitz about 3/4 of the way through the novel was exceptionally vivid and emotionally powerful. In addition, Desmond (the narrator) is dealing with an aging father, a wife whose career has just begun to take off as his own has ended, and a world in which it is increasingly difficult for him to find meaning. And yet, he does. Lots of food for thought, many opportunities for discussion.

This was a disappointing book. Deafness is not really that funny, and the ramblings are unchecked and not that interesting. On the other hand, when one has written a masterpiece such as Small World, one can be forgiven pretty much anything else. He is still one of the very best authors writing in English today, and deserves a better editor.

David Lodge's style is a delight - beautifully simple and natural, without straining after effect, ideally suited to humour, but also to more reflective passages. And this book has plenty of both. I have to use a hearing aid myself, though I am not as severely afflicted by deafness as is Desmond Bates, and therefore I don't mishear as hilariously as he does; but I also have to laugh wryly at his spot-on descriptions of the rituals connected with hearing aids, and the trials and tribulations at parties, at the theatre, or in restaurants. And he is so right that having to ask people to repeat themselves is exasperating for all concerned. Desmond's family relationships are beautifully conveyed: the love he had for his first wife and now has for his second (a pretty strong, healthy and no-nonsense character) and the exasperated affection he has for his even deafer old father, who lives a lonely life of self-neglect. Desmond himself, a retired Professor of Linguistics, is in his sixties, and is experiencing other signs of advancing years apart from deafness, for example a reduced potency, until ... Well, no: a subplot - rather more substantial, actually, than a subplot - about a flaky young American woman student at his university keeps you pleasantly on tenterhooks, but promises more, I think, than it delivers. Linguistics is one of those typically modern subjects in which, through theoretical analysis of texts (is a particular suicide note a locutionary, illocutionary or perlocutionary utterance?), `we murder to dissect'. Lodge/Bates describes it in a deadpan way in all its dry absurdity. (Apologies to linguisticians and perhaps to Lodge himself.) In the last part of the book, the humour, which has pervaded most it, fades away in moving episodes which seem to suggest that the afflictions of being hard of hearing need to be kept in proportion. What, after all, according to the life-affirming David Lodge, is a deaf sentence when compared with a death sentence?

I have always believed that in order to be funny you must be really, really smart. That explains both the success of David Lodge's numerous comic novels, many of which deal with academia, and his highly regarded critical essays. He is the only living writer whose books I purchase religiously, so when Deaf Sentence was published I knew it was only a matter of time before it found its way into my personal David Lodge library. The subject, an aging academic, a professor of linguistics, is losing his hearing (and fequently the batteries that operate his hearing aid)and this propells the various complications that ensue with his should-be-in-a-nursing home father, his newly successful entrepreneurial wife, and his ill advised mentoring of a young American doctoral student at his university. David Lodge is clever without being mean spirited, intellectural without being ponderous. Perhaps that is why I return to his books again and again.

I am an American female who had never heard of David Lodge before stumbling upon this book on the lbrabry's new fiction shelf. After reading the opening paragraphs, I was hooked.
In addition to the skillfully drawn characters and insightful look at the world of the hearing impaired, the charm of "Deaf Sentence" is in its marvelous writing style. I savored the long, beautiful sentences and wry observations. And, although the characters were presented with all their warts and foibles, they were not caricatures, but fully rounded human beings portrayed with empathy.
I am going to purchase a copy of this book so I can savor it again and give it to my husband to read (if he ever gets any time for fiction).
What a delight to discover a new author who has written plenty of other books!

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