Deafening, by Frances Itani

I finished this novel just this afternoon, and given that a large part of it is devoted to conveying the devastation of WWI, it seemed an appropriate day to read and remember.   Charles Frazier has a blurb on the back cover of the book, and I will borrow his words, since I could not do better myself.  He writes that “Itani’s writing is clear-headed and sure-handed; her characters will not leave you”.  The accuracy of his description struck me since there is indeed a competence and a clarity and an eloquence to Itani’s writing that is neither too sparse nor too overwrought.  She is lyrical without being contrived, emotional without being overly sentimental, and clear without sounding too clinical.  The result is really forceful prose that is all the more powerful for its believability.

The plot centres around a young deaf women named Grania, following her through her childhood, her education at a school for the deaf in Belleville, and her relationship and marriage to a hearing man named Jim.  When he departs to serve in the war, the story splits and follows each of their lives as they struggle through the unanticipated ferocity and magnitude of the first world war.  The metaphor of silence that the novel develops is a simple but useful one:  Grania struggles to negotiate the silence  and solitude of her world even while Jim must come to terms with the many voices silenced by the brutality and chaos of war.  So too the title, Deafening, references the fine balance between sound and silence and the forces that -either permanently or momentarily - impose silence and leave loss, chaos, and isolation in their wake.  Itani’s descriptions of the war are viscerally powerful, and they foreground the physical and mental scars the first world war inflicted on the bodies and psyches of soldiers, families, and nations.

The novel balances these tales of devastation with the love story between Jim and Grania, a story filled with hope and healing, and one that is a testament to the power of communication and potential of human connection.

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Top Girls [at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts]

This past Wednesday, I went to see the play Top Girls, showing at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill St, in the Distillery District).  With a star-studded cast including Megan Follows and Ann-Marie MacDonald, I knew I was in for a treat.  What I didn’t realize until I was plunked in my seat perusing the program, was that I had studied this play in a modern drama class in my 3rd (4th?) year, and what’s more,  I had played the same role as Megan Follows in a segment we had performed in class.  This all gave me a rather delightful little academic thrill.  The play itself is one of Churchill’s best known and probably most popularly performed, and is set in a 1980s Margaret Thatcher-ed Britain, during a time of social tension and feminist change. I can’t really say enough about the quality of the performance – Megan Follows is absolutely superb, Ann-Marie MacDonald is hilarious, and Kelli Fox, who plays Isabella, Mrs. Kidd, and Marlene’s sister Joyce is a powerhouse of talent. The entire cast is just excellent.  The play itself has 3 acts - a dinner party, the days after the dinner party, and exactly one year earlier – and 2 intermissions, and for ticket information, go the Yonge Centre for the Performing Arts website.

The guests of the dinner party are a very diverse cross-section of cultures and historical moments, all invited together by the main character Marlene (Megan Follows) to celebrate a work promotion.  The guests include a Victorian lady adventurer,  a Japanese courtesan from the 13th century, a woman who became pope while disguised as a man in the year 854(ish), a fictional character from one of the Canterbury Tales, and a figure from a Brueghel painting in which peasant housewives battle various devils in hell.  The women share their stories, often talking over one another (deliberately so, the play is written so the lines will overlap upon delivery), and often disagreeing, but also coming to see that their histories have some poignant and powerful similarities.  One of the most magnificent things about the first act is its ability to turn on a dime from complete hilarity to absolute devastation. I had never heard an audience shift so quickly from laughter to complete silence.  It’s really remarkable.  

Acts 2 and 3 shift gears by moving from the kind of “suspend your disbelief” at the possibility of a dinner party for dead women, to a more real-life, real-world setting.  Gone are the historical women, and enter now Marlene’s co-workers, sister, and troubled niece.  Marlene, in fact, is the only character who remains constant throughout the play (in both name and actor).  The rest of the characters play new characters in the 2nd and 3rd acts, and this doubling adds (an intentional) richness to the work.  Top Girls is, in many ways, built on the theories of Bertolt Brectht, a German playwright who strove in his works to remind the audience that what it was seeing was  ’a’ reality, not ‘the’ reality, and who wanted the audience to think and to always maintain a sense of critical distance.  To see the same character play a troubled 15 year old girl and a coarse peasant woman from the 16th century offers a wealth of interpretive possibility.  Morevoer, the layering effect of seeing the same body take on different stories, voices, and/or ages adds a powerful visual element and a real complexity to the play and its exploration of what women have to take on, give up, do with, or do without in order to succeed (even while arguing that ”success” itself is a highly contentious and debatable term).

Thought-provoking and entertaining – what more can one want from the theatre?

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10 reasons to read The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

10.  Death is the narrator, and if anyone (thing? entity?) can reflect, and reflect accurately, objectively, but strangely still very touchingly on the state of humanity, it’s Death.    

9.  There are 2 or 3 other stories/books within this book.  This, in high-faluting lingo, is called intertextuality.  In economic lingo, it would be called more bang for your literary buck.  In “I like books” lingo, it’s called creative and fun.

8.  The novel is brilliant.

7.  It will make you laugh.

6.  It will make you cry.

5.  It will make you feel outraged.

4. It will warm your heart.

3.  It will remind you of the power of words.

2.  It will remind you of the importance of history.

1.  You will love it.

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