Reviews

I have conflicted feelings about Deaf Sentence. For the first hundred pages or so, I was blown away by Lodge's treatment of his subject matter, which is so authentic that it could only be autobiographical. Lodge's narrator, Desmond, is a retired academic in is mid-sixties who is slowly losing his hearing; his disease is incurable and will ultimately leave him completely without hearing. Desmond, a linguist, discusses the nature of his disease with breathtaking honesty and insight, and recounts the affects of his deafness on his marriage, his academic career, and his relationships with others, including his father.

Deaf Sentence is a novel in diary entries and, occasionally, apologetically, in the third person ("I feel a fit of the third person coming on"). When it's good, it is very, very good, but Lodge is balancing too many plot lines: we have Desmond and his wife, Desmond and the eccentric graduate student, Desmond and his father, Desmond and himself. Lodge technically wraps up each each plot trajectory, but the book is a slim 300 pages, and it felt like a squeeze to close each story.

The sensitivity with which Lodge writes of deafness makes this book a wonderful read for those interested in hearing loss, but the plot was lacking and somewhat unsatisfying.

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5.0

Wonderful book! Very well written, each word placed exactly in the place where it should appear. The story itself is rather banal, but this is why it was such a joy to read. I also learnt a lot about being hard of hearing - I'm sure it will happen to me at some point.