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Viking
September 2008
On Sale: September 18, 2008
304 pages
ISBN: 0670019925
EAN: 9780670019922
Hardcover
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Fiction
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 wife’s 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 man’s effort to come to terms with
deafness and death, aging and mortality, the comedy and
tragedy of human life.
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