Canadian Author Frances Itani's novel DEAFENING

Frances Itani is a Member of the Order of Canada (b. Canada 1942.)  She is a novelist, poet, essayist and has been awarded the Int'l IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize.  The title DEAFENING refers to the young heroine, Graina, who is rendered deaf resulting from scarlett fever.  Graina is born into an Irish-Canadian family at the turn of the 20th C.  This thoughtful & expansive novel contemplates in a pensive manner, the isolation borne in a world without sound.  We discover how Graina breaks through the silence & how others broach her world.  Graina's story is entwined with that of her sister Tress.  The two share an immense bond of love that is profound & inspiring.  Tess is Graina's liaison & champion.  When Graina is taunted or pitied Tress explains "There's nothing wrong with my sister.  She's my sister, that's all."  There are other heartwarming relationships between friends & family.  DEAFENING is an ambitious & admirable novel that spans Graina's life from her childhood home, to boarding school for the deaf and as a young newlywed whose husband is sent overseas in WWI.  The book encompasses the atrocities of war & the calamitous fallouts on loved ones.  Itani paints a vivid portrait of life in a quaint, bucolic Canadian town.  There is much to recommend in this expansive novel although it moves slowly & becomes redundant.  Its greatest strengths came from the relationship between the sisters.  They "created a language of their own.  It arose as naturaly as the love between them."