Books

Deaf Sentence
By David Lodge, Viking, 2007, 291 pp.

One of England's best known writers, David Lodge has 12 previous novels and has been a Booker Award finalist twice. Deaf Sentence returns to familiar Lodge territory as it examines an aging man in a mid-life crisis that he comes to realize he has himself contributed to.

Desmond Bates is a recently retired professor of linguistics, a man whose mind remains as sharp as ever, while his hearing rapidly dissipates. Widowed a few years back, Desmond is now happily married to a woman he met in one of his classes. Winifred (Desmond endearingly calls her "Fred"), after much casting about, now owns a very successful design shop in an upscale shopping district.

Accompanying Fred to an art show one night, Desmond unwittingly agrees to do a favor for a young American student. He's just not sure what it is since he doesn't hear her request clearly enough over the party's din.

What he subsequently discovers he has agreed to do is help Alex Loomis with her graduate work, a linguistic analysis of suicide notes. They meet a few times, and Desmond discovers Alex to be as unstable as the authors of the notes she is examining.

But Deaf Sentence, despite the pun in its title, is not, say, Fatal Attraction. That can never have been Lodge's intention. His novel is a sweet, often witty, look at the misunderstanding—the mishearing—that often comes with getting older.

Desmond has a lot to contend with after perhaps retiring too soon. Aside from Alex, there is his father's developing Alzheimer's. (Their relationship is an especially poignant dance of control and responsibility.) He misses the structure of his former career and hasn't yet found a way to compose his new life, especially since he can't hear most of it. All of these problems collide at a New Year's celebration late in the book that is as droll as it is touching.

Desmond eventually realizes that he must become the older generation, that new generations are being born to take up the slack. The lesson Deaf Sentence ultimately teaches with great affection is that there are always new ways to hear and new ways to speak. That David Lodge is there to guide us is something to be ever thankful for.

Steven Whitton is a professor of English at Jacksonville State University.