Deaf Sentence

Deaf Sentence

I just read the sweetest book. David Lodge is a British novelist and academic. Some of his very funny novels deal with visiting professors who have affairs with other professors while visiting campuses across the Atlantic. But this book wasn't like that at all. Deaf Sentence is about a retired linguistics professor who is losing his hearing. He is happily married to his second wife and dealing with an aging working class father. The protagonist is finding retirement much easier to get used to than becoming a deaf person. The book is well written and lively and I'm not giving anything away here. Sweet is actually my best description for it. Lodge lets his protagonist get into realistic difficulty but he doesn't let bad things ruin him.

A gentle satire on growing old and "feeble."

I have read virtually everything by David Lodge, and I agree with the previous reviewer to some extent that this novel doesn't rank in his (Lodge's) top three. BUT.if you are the sort of reader who swears by those BBC comedies we get on PBS, and if you've ever appreciated one of the "Yes, Minister" books, or a "Rumpole of the Bailey" confection, or even the riotous novels of the South African satirist Tom Sharpe, then this Bud's for you.

Starting with the premise that someone who wears two hearing aids is of necessity "getting on in years," this novel goes on to not-so-gently skewer the widely held belief that hearing is simply a matter of volume and that the easy fix for any impairment thereto is amplification.

Good stuff here, and strongly recommended for the families and friends of folks who don't hear as well as they used to.

he has written better

i love david lodge...he is a very funny british author. That said, his previous novels are so much better...if you like british fiction start with a different one because mr. lodge is brillant, but here not so much.

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