A Sign of Her Own
The vivid historical novel of a Deaf woman's role in the invention of the telephone
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
'Absolutely brilliant. Ellen Lark is unforgettable' Emilia Hart, author of Weyward
'Vivid. Eloquent. Offers insight as well as delight' Guardian
Ellen Lark is on the verge of marriage when she and her fiancé receive an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell.
Ellen knows immediately what Bell really wants from her. Ellen is deaf, and for a time was Bell's student in a technique called Visible Speech. As he instructed her in speaking, Bell also confided in her about his dream of producing a device which would transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now, on the cusp of wealth and renown, Bell wants Ellen to speak up in support of his claim to the patent to the telephone, which is being challenged by rivals.
But Ellen has a different story to tell: that of how Bell betrayed her, and other deaf pupils, in pursuit of ambition and personal gain, and cut Ellen off from a community in which she had come to feel truly at home. It is a story no one around Ellen seems to want to hear - but there may never be a more important time for her to tell it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Marsh debuts with a middling historical about a Deaf woman in 1878 London who questions her efforts to assimilate with the hearing populace. As a young woman, Ellen Lark is an eager pupil of Alexander Graham Bell, whose Visible Speech system teaches Deaf people to speak via phonetic symbols. After meeting a Deaf man named Frank in a park, she introduces him to Bell's system. Soon, though, Frank encourages Ellen to recognize the importance of sign language, and she pushes back on her family's insistence that she only speak orally. When Bell's patent rights to the telephone are disputed by Western Union, Ellen is forced to decide whether to stand by her former mentor or side with Frank, who happens to be working for Bell's rival. Marsh skillfully captures Ellen's drive to forge a meaningful life for herself and fellow Deaf people ("It wasn't the voice that mattered: it was the connection"). Unfortunately, the narrative is flooded with an overabundance of historical details, which tend to throttle the momentum. This doesn't quite take flight from its intriguing source material.
