Silence resounds in 'Deafening'

Jessica Slater, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 6, 2003 at midnight

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Frances Itani is well-known in Canada for her short fiction and poetry. Inspired by her deaf grandmother, Itani's first published novel tells the story of Grania O'Neill, who lost her hearing at age 5 from scarlet fever.

Deafening is set in Canada on the cusp of World War I and traces Grania's youth and early adulthood, her marriage to a hearing man and their parallel experiences as war erupts and forces them apart.

The story's momentum builds slowly: Itani has clearly done her homework, entering the mind of the deaf girl with precise and absorbing detail. Grania is insulated from the world not just by her deafness but by her fiercely protective family.

We watch her struggling to form her mouth into words, trying to glean meaning from the thuds and reverberations her body can feel as the sounds themselves slip past her. Her family looks on, pushing her and willing her to succeed as they grapple with their own fears and guilt.

Her sister Tress is her safety net. They create their own language of signs, and to quell Grania's fear of the nighttime darkness, Tress ties a sheet around each of their ankles so Grania feels anchored in the silence. After several years of home schooling, Grania's family acknowledges that they can't offer her the education she needs, and she's sent to Ontario School for the Deaf.

She cries inconsolably for two weeks, then suddenly clicks into her new environment and begins to flourish. She quickly learns sign language and discovers a new world of friendship and solidarity.

When she returns home after a year, she tries to share everything with her sister and teach her the new signs, but just as the hearing world can be brought to her only by description, so she learns that the new world of "school" is ultimately separate and inexplicable back home.

Itani presents this not as a realization of sadness but as the basis of maturity. She follows each of her characters with a powerful sense of the distinct individual experiences that shape a human being. We're shown that within loving relationships, separation can be both unbearable and strengthening.

Several years after graduating from the school, Grania meets Jim Lloyd, a hearing man. Itani doesn't drag out the romance of their relationship, but she conveys the feeling of it, the private world they build together and their persistent desire to understand each other.

Two weeks after they're married, Jim leaves for war. He serves as a stretcher-bearer and witnesses unimaginable suffering. As the fighting grinds on and on, the horrors of war on the battlefield and at home are portrayed through their counterpoint stories.

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.

As the novel progresses, Grania and Jim live through terrible experiences in the years they spend apart. Their final reconciliation drives the story, but Itani treats the scene with perfect restraint: There's no weighty analysis, no fairy-tale excess. As in the rest of the novel, we're shown the subtle weave of emotions: the uncertainty that accompanies determination, the separation that is part of togetherness, the sorrow that infuses love.

Itani is able to convey these 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 is the technology editor for the Rocky Mountain News.

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