TELL

A culture of silence prevails in a small Canadian town, affecting two at-risk marriages and one damaged Great War vet.

That would be Kenan Oak, who volunteered enthusiastically in 1914 as a 20-year-old and returned in 1918 to his hometown on Lake Ontario with a useless left arm and eye. Only now, in November 1919, does the still shellshocked Kenan leave his house. He doesn’t speak much to his wife, Tress, though they do make love. Tress is the link to this Canadian author’s best-known novel, Deafening (2003), which described her younger sister Grania becoming deaf as a child and her purposeful navigation through a silent world. (Grania is mentioned here but does not appear.) Itani made Grania’s journey vivid; she has a harder time getting us to care about Kenan’s journey back to normality. His leaving the house is a big deal, and his solitary skating on the rink at night a bigger one, yet we stay detached; Kenan’s upbringing is a factor. Grania was surrounded by love; Kenan, an orphan, was adopted by a taciturn, ungiving welder. In his slow return to sociability, he's most comfortable with Tress’ uncle Am, a handyman who “grew up around silent men.” That habit of silence has bedeviled Am’s marriage to Maggie O’Neill. "How do we proceed?" Maggie wonders, sounding more like a lawyer than an aggrieved wife. She proceeds nicely enough when she meets Lukas Sebastian, a voice teacher from Europe. He’s directing a choral concert in which Maggie will sing solos, and they become lovers. The slow-moving novel circulates among Kenan and Tress, Maggie and Am; an exceptionally awkward ending is summarized in a letter.

Though attentive to period detail, Itani seems more constricted than liberated by the past in her sixth novel.