Commencé avec beaucoup d'humour sur la surdité puis du suspense -que lui veut Alex Loom ? - et la misère de la vieillesse et de la vieillesse et la disparition de ses parents. Écrit à la première et troisième personne. Un livre qui n'est pas une entité, plutôt des notes séparées. Pas de fil. Manque complètement d'unité. Mais lecture très intéressante quand même avec de très bons moments. EVEN THOUGH the plot wasn't particularly gripping and touched on many of the same themes of some of his other books, I enjoyed this anyway because I love the way David Lodge writes. Just really good, witty, intelligent, insightful writing, interwoven with fascinating little snippets about various things I'm interested in - specifically linguistics in this one, as the main character was a professor of linguistics. I did a one-semester course on linguistics as an elective at uni and absolutely loved it! So fun and interesting. The lecturer would explain about bilabial plosives and a susurrus of “puh… puh….buh…buh…” sounds would run through the room as everyone quietly tried it.The scenes where Desmond made blunders due to not hearing properly were played for laughs but I didn't find them funny at all - in fact in general I thought this was quite a sad book. Not just because he was slowly losing his hearing, but also the bits about him losing his father to old age. It wasn’t depressing, just rather thoughtful and introspective. I pictured Desmond's wife Fred as looking exactly like Celia Imrie. I liked her.
What do You think about A Vida Em Surdina (2008)?
Wonderful novel, quite funny and quite disturbingly sad (especially about old age and infirmity).
—mera
Very entertaining, funny, witty and touching narrative. Lodge is a great writer.
—Constuctivecritisizer
