by David Lodge
Harvill Secker (Random House)
~ Review in Halifax Herald, July 2009
Desmond Bates is going deaf. He is retired from his academic teaching post, bored, and facing a world of silence. The imperfect technology of his hearing aids and his inability to stockpile the correct batteries make social events something to be endured, and he is becoming less and less willing to go out. “When you can’t hear what people are saying, you have two options: either keep quiet and nod and murmur and smile . . . or talk non-stop on a subject of your own choosing ...”. Neither method works well, he finds out to his enormous embarrassment.
At a cocktail party with his wife, he has an intense conversation with a young Ph.D. student, where he tries the ‘nod and smile’ method. A phone call from her some days later, inquiring as to why he failed to keep their appointment to help her research her Ph.D., throws him into a quandary - should he tell his wife about this, or keep it a secret? Inexplicable guilt causes him to opt for the latter. The results are disastrous and hilarious.
Lodge seamlessly alternates between first and third person. This shifting perspective highlights the retired Bates’ faltering esteem, and his dismal relationship with his father, who is sinking into dementia and “suspects a plot to defraud him is being hatched on the western seaboard of Scotland” (which, coincidentally, is the new location of the Inland Revenue).
Like Desmond Bates, Lodge is losing his hearing. Unlike Bates, Lodge’s ability to see humour in otherwise difficult circumstances makes Deaf Sentence insightful and ‘laugh out loud’ funny. And as he succinctly points out, society seems to treat deafness as a cause for amusement and irritation rather than the difficult tragedy it is and the increasing alienation it causes.
Lodge writes with humour and grace. He doesn’t shirk the issues as Bates struggles to deal with the loss of his working life, his father’s deteriorating health, and the thousand tiny indignities of approaching old age. Not to mention the escalating ‘situation’ of the Ph.D. student!
David Lodge taught at Birmingham University, UK, specializing in Victorian fiction. He has written more than 25 books, two of which were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He lives in Birmingham, UK.
