cover image Chattering

Chattering

Louise Stern. Granta U.K. (IPG/Trafalgar Sq.), $14.95 trade paper (170p) ISBN 978-1-84708-177-3

In her engaging debut story collection, Stern—who, like her characters grew up deaf—explores the disconnection, loneliness, and alienation that accompanies the deaf experience. In “Rio,” two young homeless deaf women in Copacabana consider becoming prostitutes after they are informed of the value of their silence. “The Deaf School” takes place in a town inhabited largely by a deaf community. In other thinly connected vignettes, readers meet a wild man, “pirates,” and a window washer in England. Despite refreshing perspectives, the emotional subtext of these stories—particularly in the conclusions—remains too subtle to register, with Stern paying more attention to exposition and rumination than her characters’ feelings. Despite unremarkable prose and underdeveloped themes, Stern effectively renders sign language into prose. As Laura is “intoxicated by the certainty of her [mother’s] movements,” in “King Eddie,” so too does Stern’s writing gain confidence when she communicates a soundless, broken language that is at once unique and universal. (Nov.)