Ismael and His Sisters

by Louise Stern

Siblings Ismael, Rosie and Cristina are deaf, and so are many in their Maya village. The deaf and hearing alike communicate in sign language, forming a tightly-knit community with an unsophisticated, simple lifestyle. But when Ismael gets into a fight at the local fiesta and flees the village, leaving Rosie and Cristina to fend for themselves, the daily rhythms of village life are disrupted, and all that they trust in comes under threat. Ismael and His Sisters is a remarkable debut novel from the acclaimed author of Chattering. It conjures up a world set apart, made visceral through its concentrated language, where sign language bridges exterior and interior worlds and gives a physical shape to the way we experience the world. It explores the interplay between the powerful forces within us and the dark elemental forces beyond our control, exposing the 'bottomless, hostile ocean' in which we all flounder. This is an extraordinary novel about the power of familial bonds, the barriers we build out of language, the dark elemental forces that threaten to overwhelm us, and above all, what it is like to be human.

Genres: Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 5, 2015

About the author

Louise Stern (born 1978) is an American writer and artist, and works around ideas of language, communication and isolation.

Stern grew up in an exclusively deaf community and is fourth-generation deaf on her father's side, and third-generation deaf on her mother's side. She attended California School for the Deaf, Fremont.

Stern studied at Gallaudet University, where she was the only student studying art. She moved to the United Kingdom in 2002 where she gained an MA from Sotheby's Institute of Art. She works as an assistant to artist Sam Taylor-Wood.

Her own artwork has been exhibited in galleries in Geneva, Barcelona, Madrid, London and Port Eliot. She is the founder and publisher of Maurice, a contemporary art magazine for children.

Her first collection of short stories, Chattering, was published by Granta in 2011. Alan Warner called it "an amazing debut: vibrantly perceptive, gentle, funny and profound".

Her first novel, Ismael and His Sisters, was written in, and is set in, a deaf village in the Yucatán Peninsula, where Stern communicated in Mayan Sign Language. There will be an accompanying book of photographs to it.

She has also written plays, including The Ugly Birds and The Interpreter, which was performed at the Bush Theatre. Stern was commissioned to write stories for BBC Radio 4 in 2012 and 2013.

Reviews

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.

I got this book as part of a book subscription box in which each delivery focussed on a different underserved area of diversity. In this one, it was all about the d/Deaf community, and indeed this book contains a bunch of deaf characters along with a diverse backdrop in the form of their Mayan village.

The plot basically follows what happens after Ismael flees his community after a fight and we take a look at the way in which wider society deals with deafness. The world isn’t built for people like Ismael, and indeed we can see just how scary the world is through his eyes (and ears).

It wasn’t the best book, but it wasn’t terrible either, and there were a few lines here and there that were beautifully written and which were enough to keep me reading. The same couldn’t be said of the other book I received, but then it was romance-heavy and so it wasn’t really my bag to begin with. All in all, it was a decent read and a decent subscription service.

[Margo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, this is just ok.
I did love the vivid descriptions and the theme of isolation running through it.
However, this is meant to be quite a peril-heavy plot and I just never felt like any of the characters were really in danger.
It made it all feel a bit inconsequential.

[Annelies Kusters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik weet niet goed wat ik van dit boek vind. Ik was op voorhand wat sceptisch over dit boek omdat het zich grotendeels afspeelt in een "gebarend dorp" in Mexico waar de schrijfster slechts een korte tijd heeft doorgebracht (en de literatuur over zulke dorpen is zo vaak romantiserend). Maar dat ervaarde ik dus niet zozeer als een probleem. Het was echt een boek waar ik mij doorheen moest slepen, waar ik snel over sommige paragrafen ging omdat het zo vaak té descriptief, poëtisch en langdradig naar mijn zin was (en achteraf besefte ik dat in zulke paragrafen soms belangrijke gebeurtenissen begraven zaten...). Hier en daar apprecieerde ik wel heel erg hoe ze de (visuele, viscerale) ervaring van dove mensen en van gebaren weergaf, dit vond ik heel speciaal en inspirerend (en dat is de enige reden dat ik het boek volledig uitgelezen heb), al vond ik de conversaties/gedachten in gebaren-gloss soms iets te moeilijk om te volgen en soms leek het of het erg willekeurig werd geglosst. Ik begrijp ook de schorpioen-symboliek niet. Ik twijfel tussen twee en drie sterren. Chattering (haar debuut) vond ik erg goed en de stijl van Chattering is heel anders, en ik hoop dat de schrijfster meer die schrijfstijl zal gebruiken en ontwikkelen dan de schrijfstijl in Ismael and his sisters...

[Neil Challis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanted to like it but didn't,the writing was stilted and I understand that the writer is deaf but this is not an easy book to read as the language does not flow.The story is set in a Mayan village that has a lot of deaf people in,not told why,2 sisters and a brother live together,the brother Ismael has to go away to the big city were things take a turn.Emotions are put into pictures.Seems to me to be wriietn for the hard of hearing but confused me.

[Sandy Morley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent enough story, clumsy prose.

[Aimz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought Ismael and His Sisters (Granta, 2015) after listening to Louise Stern's 'postcard from London' on BBC Radio 4's Open Book. The postcard was read on air by an actor as Stern is deaf; she is the fourth generation to be born deaf in her family. After seeing a glimpse of the deaf community in Grayson Perry's marvellous Who Do You Think You Are documentary series, I was fascinated by Stern's ideas about the relationship between the deaf experience and writing, and the ways in which she tries to articulate this relationship through her work. (I highly recommend searching for the podcast.)

The titular characters of Ismael and His Sisters are deaf and live in a Mayan village, a community where the hearing and non-hearing coexist. An event occurs that forces Ismael to flee the village and live in the city and the narrative splits between his experience in the city and the lives of Rosie and Cristina, the sisters he has left behind.

Ismael and His Sisters is a beautifully written short novel; at times, the writing made me feel woozy and disorientated as certain passages — particularly Rosie's — guide you towards viewing the world in a different way. And not just the external, physical world: Stern shows how experiencing the world without verbal *or* written language (the protagonists cannot read) can drastically alter how one's emotions and inner thoughts are felt and understood.

It's definitely a book well worth checking out, particularly if you enjoy the writing of Eimear McBride, Toni Morrison, Ali Smith, and José Eduardo Agualusa.

[Tan Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it is myself, but the heavy use of descriptive prose was a tad overwhelming for me. Well, it is unavoidable since all 3 protagnists in the book are all deaf. Even then the lack of conversation in the narrative wears you down when reading, thankfully before you lose patience with the book altogether. Meanwhile I'm not too sure whether I interpreted the symbolic meaning behind "sign language" and "scorpion", the 2 main themes in the book, correctly...

[Andrea Lightfoot · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book features characters who are deaf, and so there is no speech in the usual "traditional" way like other books have - instead, the words, thoughts and feelings of the characters are in sign language, and often in a poetic art form. Louise Stern herself is deaf, so she writes from a personal viewpoint.

The events within the book move along very quickly - at times I wondered what had happened in between.

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected to like this book more than I did. I was fascinated by the attempts to demonstrate how signing is a different form of communication and connected to a different experience of a locality and community. However I didn't actually feel that the author empathised with the characters and therefore, as a reader, I felt distanced from them, almost as if the approach was a bit patronising.

[Sarah Jordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

stupid book about signing which really wasn't about being deaf or sign language.
very disappointed!