A decent book, but the lack of wit, boring characters, and exceptional prose prevents it from becoming a favorite. Three separate stories are intertwined in a relatively unique way which keeps you slightly guessing, but never seems to deliver. The work feels devoid of climax and closure.

The Deafening by Itani writes great characters into perception. The hardships of war are captured in full grotesque nature with a moving narrative that follows the lives of a deaf woman and her husband who left home to join World War I. Details of human emotion are perfectly articulated through the writing and you will probably find yourself laughing or sobbing along at various points in the story.

Fantastic storytelling. Blackswangreen reads like the fountain of thought from a thirteen-year-old with dashes of profound realizations bubbling to the top in the form of short one-liner witticisms.

Lustful urges and raw emotions of an adolescent boy (Jason Taylor) are perfectly expressed through inexplicable and explicit sexual musings involving the girls in his life. The cast of characters is quite large, but entirely familiar. With a unique perspective on life, and great dialog, each of the characters comes into Jason’s world and leads him to further insights about adulthood.

David Mitchell also wrote another great book, Cloud Atlas.

Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs … these are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother’s womb and from her birth out of her mother’s.

— Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: The First Edition (1855)

The whole preface (or epic poem?) reads like this. It feels like an overflowing garden of emotion in full bloom.

I don't think anything else I've read is quite like it. Maybe I should make it a mission to read banned books?