DEAFENING by Frances Itani

Deafening was the debut novel of Canadian author Frances Itani. I picked it up several times while at Bookmark in Charlottetown over the holiday season but have only now finally had an opportunity to read it.

Deafening was the debut novel of Canadian author Frances Itani. I picked it up several times while at Bookmark in Charlottetown over the holiday season but have only now finally had an opportunity to read it.

Published in 2003, Deafening is the story of Grania, a young woman in Ontario who is rendered completely deaf as a child by illness. Aged 9, she is sent to a school for deaf children, which changes the course of her life.

When working after completing her education, Grania meets Jim, a hearing man, and they fall in love. Shortly after their marriage, Jim deploys overseas to the battlefields of France and Belgium in World War 1.

This novel is not a romance novel but it is absolutely a love story. The relationship between Grania and Jim, surviving the great war, is a beautiful one to consider in the most brutal of circumstances.

What is also beautiful is the writing of Itani, who describes Grania’s experiences as a deaf woman with incredible detail, a result no doubt of her research and personal experience with deaf family. This is an empowering, very real rendering of deafness.

What is also incredible is the descriptions Itani uses in describing Jim’s experiences in war, particularly on the front lines. It was impossible not to be completely transported to the battlefields, to bear witness to what Jim experienced and saw. It was at times confronting and desperately sad, but only because of the phenomenal ability of Itani to describe the picture for the reader. If the fiction rules are “show, don’t tell” then Itani has succeeded in ways I have rarely read before. There were moments when I felt like I was in those theatres of war, not in my home in Australia in 2023.

It’s funny that when I was book browsing over the holidays, I kept coming back to this book but it took me a month to purchase it. My intuition told me I would enjoy it, and that instinct was spot on. This novel was extraordinary - I was engrossed from the beginning and these characters are some who I will not quickly or easily forget.

A wonderful book, Deafening is a 5 star read. I cannot recommend it highly enough.