Deaf Sentence

by David Lodge (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.49

  Professor Desmond Bates is not enjoying his early retirement. Worst of all is his hearing loss, aconstant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. Through his deafness he meets a young woman whose wayward behaviour threatens to destabilize his life completely.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.76

  Retired Professor of Linguistics 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 whom Desmond has agreed to help after a typical misunderstanding at a party. But her increasingly bizarre requests cannot all be blamed on his defective hearing. So much for growing old gracefully...

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.49

  When the university merged his Department of Linguistics with English, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement, but he is not enjoying it. He misses the purposeful routine of the academic year, and has lost his appetite for research. His wife Winifred's late-flowering career goes from strength to strength, reducing his role to that of escort and househusband, while the rejuvenation of her appearance makes him uneasily conscious of the age gap between them. The monotony of his days is relieved only by wearisome journeys to London to check on the welfare of his eighty-nine-year-old father, an ex dance musician who stubbornly refuses to move from the house he is patently unable to live in with safety. But these discontents are nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment.In the popular imagination, he observes, deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic, but for the deaf person himself it is no joke. It is through his deafness that Desmond inadvertently gets involved with a young woman whose wayward and unpredictable behavior threatens to destabilize his life completely. Funny and moving by turns, Deaf Sentence is a brilliant account of one man's effort to come to terms with deafness and death, aging and mortality, the comedy and tragedy of human lives.