Wednesday 6 August 2008

David Lodge: Deaf Sentence

This book is clearly a David Lodge book. If you didn't know the provenance of the author, it would have become apparent on reading the first chapter. Although the place the book is set in is some vague Northern Town, it still is with the main character being a retired University Lecturer in Linguistics (pretty similar to Professor Lodge).

It takes a little while to get into the book, but the pun of the title points out the trials and tribulations of being deaf and how this interacts with the surroundings.

The characterisation is strong and it is an easy book to finish, although I would say that there is little deep meaningful insights in it.

I enjoyed it, but wait till it comes out in paperback.

4 comments:

Elaine said...

Thank you for the crit; the title sounded intriguing, rather as did "Consciousness: a User's Guide" by Adam Zeman. I found the latter book when I was searching in Amazon for something on Epilepsy (which I developed following a stroke), and Adam Zeman was my Consultant Neurologist.

It is a very well written book; he cleverly writes about some of the 'hard stuff' then inserts some tale of his children in explanation and to lighten the mood before going back to the hard stuff again.

This method of writing kept my attention to the end.

I suspect it will be rather easy for the medical profession and harder for the layman.

Elaine said...

I have written in today's blog about "The Spare Room by Helen Garner which I read following a recommendation hy nice lady doctor.

You might enjoy it.

Elaine said...

I have now finished Deaf Sentence. To some of it I gave wry smiles of recognition (I am not as seriously deaf as the hero but do wear 2 hearing aids; the parties where you catch very little of what is said to you so you nod and smile.

I thought he wrote very well about Auschwitz/Birkenau and found it very moving.

Thank you for the recommendation. I tend to read many books of the same genre (police or thrillers), and so it is good to broaden my range.

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