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Deaf Sentence

By David Lodge

(36)

| Mass Market Paperback | 9780141041049

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Book Description

Retired Professor of Lingustics Desmond Bates is going deaf. It's a bother for his wife who has an enviably successful new career and is too busy to be endlessly repeating herself. Roles are reversed with his aging father, who resents his son's attempts to help him. And then there's Alex, a student Continue

Critics

Is silence really golden?

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge Harvill Secker £17.99, pp294 'Deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic,' writes David Lodge in his latest novel. His protagonist, Desmond Bates, is merely hard of hearing, which makes him even more of a joke. Without a h ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

I beg your pardon?

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge 294pp, Harvill Secker, £17.99 At first sight, Desmond Bates, the 60-something hero of Deaf Sentence, looks like an escapee from a much earlier stage of David Lodge's compendious back catalogue. He is a retired linguistics ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

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4 Reviews

3 people find this helpful

*** This comment contains spoilers! ***

Very good, but not "seriously funny"

I start with a question: why on earth on the cover is written "gloriously funny", "many laugh-out-loud moment" and so on?
It is not a funny book. There are nice dialogs, I smiled on occasions, but the lasting feeling is that of an uncomfortable book. It makes you feel the pain of becoming old a ... (continue)

I start with a question: why on earth on the cover is written "gloriously funny", "many laugh-out-loud moment" and so on?
It is not a funny book. There are nice dialogs, I smiled on occasions, but the lasting feeling is that of an uncomfortable book. It makes you feel the pain of becoming old and deaf, it makes you regret all the times you got annoyed at your dad who was a bit deaf. I found the description of the relationship father-son (both ways, the narrator with his father and with his own son) very realistic, and deep and really moving.
Somehow I feel that the story of Alex was added later to spice up a quite introspective book: it didn't really fit with the overall story, and it ended in a too simplistic way.
I loved the description of the visit to Auschwitz. I will have to read it again when I will go myself.
I recommend this book, but do not let yourself be mislead by the cover!

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Loredana said on Jul 29, 2009 | Add your feedback

Very nice, intelligent, funny at times, and deeply sorrowful at others. Lodge is reusing many themes of his previous novels, however: Ageing, marriage, the relationship with the father. They are very well developed, and some of the passages concerning the father-son relationship are very touching, b ... (continue)

Very nice, intelligent, funny at times, and deeply sorrowful at others. Lodge is reusing many themes of his previous novels, however: Ageing, marriage, the relationship with the father. They are very well developed, and some of the passages concerning the father-son relationship are very touching, but there is a sense of déjà vu.
I recommend this book.

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bonaccia said on Dec 22, 2009 | Add your feedback

Picturing, as it does the universal problem of deafness and aging this suffers less than other David Lodge novels from focusing on insular lives of academia and the competition for tenure and advancement.

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huntch said on Apr 27, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

I really enjoyed reading this book, and pretty much read it in one sitting. It was comical, well written, and educational. This book had me chuckling every so often that even my dog looked up with questioning eyes. The plot was ridiculous in itself - the panties left in his jacket, the invitation fo ... (continue)

I really enjoyed reading this book, and pretty much read it in one sitting. It was comical, well written, and educational. This book had me chuckling every so often that even my dog looked up with questioning eyes. The plot was ridiculous in itself - the panties left in his jacket, the invitation for punishment. Besides the comical aspect - there were more deeper issues if one dug deep enough. The death vs deaf dichotomy, the whole idea that deafness is comical, while blindness is tragic. I believe that over 70% of people living in the United States don't even know how to listen and are in a way symbolically, deaf. It is easy to hear someone speaking, and rather difficult to actually sit and listen. On the other hand, learning to live with deafness as it progresses is also a type of death, as the protagonist pointed out. The book flowed very well and kept me up for most of the night. I definitely recommend this book. I'm now curious about the writer's other books - are they as well written and comical??

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April Moran said on Dec 30, 2008 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback