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Deaf Sentence: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: David Lodge
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $14.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 3886
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0670019925
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780670019922
ASIN: 0670019925
Publication Date: September 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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 wifes 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 mans effort to come to terms with deafness and death, aging and mortality, the comedy and tragedy of human life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 on the subject of aging November 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
the book was an easy read - with a subject matter that a lot of us can identify with: our aging bodies, retirement, aging parents, lost lust, etc. It started out a little bit like an audiology textbook but got infinitely better as the story went on. The English humor added to the pleasure of it. I would recommend it for the mature audience.
 An excellent novel November 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Other reviews provide ample information about the plot, setting, and characters of DEAF SENTENCE, David Lodge's fourteenth and most recent novel. I write mostly to note that DEAF SENTENCE is a very well written and structured novel. It betokens that Lodge certainly is not slipping; if anything, he has become even more accomplished as a novelist. Further, DEAF SENTENCE has a depth that I do not remember from the four or so earlier novels of his that I read.
DEAF SENTENCE begins as a clever and funny novel about the confusions and travails of being very hard of hearing, as told by a retired professor (Desmond Bates) who, in addition to being nearly deaf, is mildly vexed in other ways by advancing age, retirement, and family, especially younger career-oriented wife and very elderly father. Towards the middle of the novel, the pace threatens to bog down in everyday minutia but Lodge manages to push and/or pull the reader through. Then, in its last quarter, the novel changes tone and character, the humor recedes to be replaced by love and understanding, and the preoccupations of Desmond Bates (and the themes of the novel) become death and life. At the end, DEAF SENTENCE is both poignant and exceedingly humane. What began as something of a comedy goes out on a serious but by no means tragic note. An excellent novel.
About More Than Deafness November 10, 2008
As many of the dust-jacket blurbs note, in _Deaf Sentence_ David Lodge gives a pitch-perfect description of the frustrations and embarrassments of being hard of hearing. His look at deafness goes deeper, however, revealing its heavy personal toll on relationships, be it in the simple irritation that chafes from day to day with a spouse, or in the lingering difficulty of attempting to enrich--without the aid of good communication--already distant relationships with grown children or an ailing father. Lodge's characters and situations are none too fresh--an retired linguistics (read English) professor worries over the academic and sexual interest of a young blonde graduate student--but what he does with them is riveting and, eventually, life affirming. By turns funny, wry, cynical and touching, _Deaf Sentence_ proves a wonderful read for most anyone, not simply those who know someone who is hearing impaired.
Interesting Character & Poignant Descriptions October 15, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Lodge gives a detailed picture of what it's like to go deaf in middle age and all the limitations deafness brings. The deep description of a deaf man's life feels familiar when he faces the same issues everyone does as they age and terribly sad when his hearing loss isolates him from people he cares about. The main character would be interesting even if he weren't deaf, and his deafness adds poignancy that makes this book special.
"What shall I do with myself today?" October 5, 2008
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
David Lodge's "Deaf Sentence" is a seriocomic novel about a man whose quality of life is steadily declining. Desmond Bates, a former professor of linguistics, takes early retirement, mostly because of a hearing loss that began twenty years earlier. He suffers from "high-frequency deafness...caused by accelerated loss of the hair cells in the inner ear...." Since there is no treatment for this condition, Desmond resorts to hearing aids, which prove to be inconvenient and, in some circumstances, useless. As he dourly observes, "deafness is a kind of pre-death, a drawn-out introduction to the long silence into which we will all eventually lapse."
Now in his sixties, Desmond's existence settles into a boring routine. His wife, Winifred (whom he calls Fred), on the other hand, is rejuvenated, partly as a result of the flourishing new interior design business that takes up most of her time. Adding to his gloomy disposition is Desmond's concern for his eighty-nine year old father, Harry, who lives alone in London. Not only is Desmond's father also going deaf, but there are alarming signs that he is no longer able to care for himself adequately. Unfortunately, Harry refuses when Desmond offers to hire someone to look in on him and lend a hand with household chores.
"Deaf Sentence" is a deeply affecting novel that springs from the author's personal experience with high-frequency deafness. The book succeeds on many levels and is enhanced by Lodge's clever use of language, entertaining literary and cultural references, and vivid descriptive passages. One day, when Desmond is strolling across the campus where he used to teach, he encounters a horde of students pouring out of their classes. "I floated on their tide like a piece of academic wreckage," he muses with a hint of self-mockery. The author elevates the mundane by poignantly exploring the ebb and flow of marital relationships, the physical and mental decline that accompanies aging, and the toll that illness and disability take on both the victim and his family. Lodge conveys his knowledge of all these themes subtly, sensitively, and with a healthy dose of bracing humor.
Desmond is an engaging first-person narrator, who sometimes lapses into the third person, presumably to give himself a breather. Fred is a devoted and sympathetic spouse, but as the years go by, she is becoming more and more exasperated by her husband's habits, especially his increasing reliance on alcohol as an anesthetic. Desmond is beginning to feel like "a redundant appendage to the family, an unfortunate liability" who no longer commands the respect that he once took for granted. To complicate matters further, an attractive but unstable young student named Alex Loom threatens to upend Desmond's already shaky existence when she asks him to supervise her dissertation on "the stylistic analysis of suicide notes." Should he risk getting involved with this possibly predatory female?
The novel draws us in more and more as the suspense builds. We wonder how Desmond and Fred will adjust to the shift in their respective roles; what Desmond will do when his father can no longer live alone; and whether or not Desmond will give in to the lovely Alex in order to salve his battered ego. Lodge's vivid characters soon become familiar acquaintances whom we get to know so well that it is difficult to part with them. In this touching, funny, and wise book, David Lodge deftly and unsentimentally illuminates the challenges and frustrations that, sooner or later, everyone must face.
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