Once Upon a Bookshelf

The Story

Deafening tells the story of Grawnia, a girl in a rural Canadian town at the beginning of the 20th century, who has lost her hearing due to scarlet fever. The story spans just over about fifteen years of her life, starting from when she is a very young girl learning how to communicate with people after losing her hearing, to going to school for the deaf, to falling in love and getting married, to living through WWI.

The Review

I don’t know what it is about books about Canadians in WWI, but I feel like I’ve read more of them in the past few years than I have of all other nationalities in all other wars combined. I’ve read some brilliant ones that I have/will come back to again and again, but you wouldn’t think it’s a subject matter I would enjoy reading about. It’s usually emotionally raw (in at least portions of it) and it tears you to bits, but it keeps drawing me back for more…

This book was definitely one of those about WWI that I will be coming back to again. I loved this book so very, very much.

It was a bit hard to get into at first. It’s a quiet novel, so felt a little bit slow-paced even though there was always something going on, whether it was Grawnia’s adjustment to being involved with the deaf community, or whether it’s about her husband Jim’s experiences in the war.

I’ve never read any books before where the main character is a deaf person, but I love how this gave me such an insight into the life of someone who would not be able to hear a thing. It was brilliant to get a glimpse into that. And even the way the book is narrated, it just seemed to embody that soundlessness – when you’re reading about Gawnia, you don’t hear the noise of anything else that is going on, it’s just focused exactly on what is important at that exact moment.

The Bottom Line

What an utterly beautiful book! It was a bit slow moving at times, but totally worth getting into. I want to say that this is one of the best books I’ve read this year, but seeing as I’ve now read five books this year… it doesn’t really express how much I loved it.

Other Reviews

In Spring it is the Dawn, Life is a Patchwork Quilt. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

Paul Sturgis is a 73 year old man when we start this book. He lives alone in a small flat that he has come to loath. His only living relative is the widow of a cousin, and they (Sturgis and his cousin’s widow) were never close. He has no real friends – only a few acquaintances.

He lives a very uneventful life, until two very different women enter into his life. One, a younger woman, has been recently divorced and somewhat elbows her own spontaneous life into the middle of Sturgis’ slow paced and rather predictable one. The other is an ex-girlfriend of Sturgis’, whom he hasn’t seen in many a year. He has conflicting feelings towards both women, but he is determined to no longer spend the rest of his life alone.

In all honesty, there were things that I really liked and things that I really did not like about this book. And I liked the things I liked about the same as I disliked the things I disliked, so that in the end I’m not sure whether I enjoyed this or not… Which makes writing about it here a little bit difficult.

So, the things that I liked, first off… The author certainly made the loneliness of old age palpable. I could feel it, almost taste it. It was quite heartbreaking. (But in a good sort of way.) I also liked that this book wasn’t confined to one setting – it takes place in London, but Sturgis also takes trips to Venice and Nice, so it gives different views of places from the perspective of Sturgis.

And the things that I disliked… There was a period in the middle of the book where it dragged on, and I had to force myself to keep reading. I like how the flow worked with the beginning and ending of the book, but it just got to be a bit too much in the middle where it seemed like we weren’t working towards a climax of any sort. The other think I really didn’t like about this book was that, to me, the narration came across as being pretentious. It felt like big, obscure words work used for the sake of making the book sound really smart.

And then there’s Paul Sturgis, the main character, and I really can’t make up my mind about him. He’s a bit of a mystery to me. One moment he likes someone, then next he really dislikes them. He doesn’t want to be alone, but as soon as he’s in the company of another person he can’t wait to be alone. I just… am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fickleness in him. And so I’m not sure whether to pity him or be annoyed.

The theme of having too much freedom played a very large part in this book. Sturgis has no one to be held accountable to, no one he needs to take care of, no one he needs to worry about leaving alone if something were to happen to him. He has no real responsibilities to anything in life. Yet this lack of ties is a lot of what results in his extreme loneliness. Gave me something to ponder about in regards to my own future.

Bottom Line: There were good things and bad things about this book. It sounded really good, but then the way it was written resulted in a book that wasn’t really my style – there wasn’t much happening, and it didn’t feel like much character development was going on. The author has won a Booker Prize for a previous novel, been long listed for another one, and has written many more books… I won’t be reading them.

I was introduced to The Blue Castle in my first semester at university. I was living on the same floor in residence as Rachel, and at that point in time I hadn’t read much by LMM other than the Anne and Emily books and a few short story books. In typical Rachel fashion, she was on her perpetual crusade to spread the love of awesome books. She lent me her copy of The Blue Castle, and I fell in love instantly. I have reread it countless times, yet for some reason I have never blogged about it. What a tragedy! That is being remedied immediately.

This is one of Montgomery’s few books that focuses on an adult character. It’s definitely got the same innocence and goodness that is apparent from her other books, only this time it’s about a bunch of adults. Valancy is, however, very much like a child in some aspects. She’s 29, but she’s still very innocent and naive. She led a fairly sheltered life up until the point when the book begins; it isn’t until she is told that she has about a year to live that she finally actually starts living.

See, Valancy has been spending her life trying to please her mother, her uncles, her aunts, and basically everyone but herself. After making a secret trip to visit the doctor, and being told that she has (at most) a year to live, Valancy decides to stop trying to please everyone else in her life, and to spend the rest of her life doing what SHE wants. Of course, she’s not a bad sort, so one of the first big things she does is go and nurse sweet little Ceclia Gay, who happens to be dying of consumption. And THAT is where she meets the dashing, yet dangerous (if you are to believe all the rumours you hear) Barney Snaith.

And we all love Barney.

Most of this book has a feeling of bittersweetness throughout the book. Valancy is finally learning to live when she believes she won’t be alive for much longer. But, true to LMM fashion, it has a lovely, happy, and completely satisfying ending. (Cannot spoil, cannot spoil, but oh this book makes me want to squeal sometimes.)

There is just so much wonderfulness going on in this book that it’s hard to know where to start. But let us start with Barney, because he is wonderful. A guy who owns his own island in Ontario – with a small cottage on it. How lovely! A guy who is a secretly an author. (A guy who is also secretly the son of a billionaire but that’s not really part of his charm.) He comes across as dangerous, he is rumoured to be a murderer and all sorts of other bad stuff, but he’s rather … harmless. And lovely.

Valancy herself is brilliant. She grows so much in this book. So much character development; I love it! Even her family starts to realize what a capable woman Valancy has become, that she is no longer a child, and that she is so much more than they had always thought she was.

And the scenery – ah! Would love love love to go up to Barney’s island. Unlike what we normally expect from LMM, this one doesn’t take place at all on the East Coast – instead, it’s all in Ontario. The Muskoka-ish area. Which is lovely. So although I can’t smell the sea permeating through the book, I can definitely smell that woodsy smell. Ah!

I love this book; I really, really do. And I have satisfied my craving for this book for another year. Then I will probably need to pull it out again.

Bottom Line: If you haven’t, read it. It’s brilliant and wonderful and positively lovely.