Aquarium
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A debut novel following two sisters, both deaf and raised in seclusion by deaf parents, and the shattering consequences that unfold when that isolation comes to an end.
Sisters Lili and Dori Ackerman are deaf. Their parents—beautiful, despondent Anna; fearsome and admired Alex—are deaf, too. Alex, a scrap metal collector and sometime prophet, opposes any attempt to integrate with the hearing; to escape their destructive influence, the girls are educated at home. Deafness is no disability, their father says, but an alternative way of life, preferable by far to that of the strident, hypocritical hearing.
Living in a universe of their own creation, feared by and disdainful of the other children on their block, Lili and Dori grow up semi-feral. Lili writes down everything that happens—just the facts. And Dori, the reader, follows her older sister wherever she goes. United against a hostile and alien world, the girls and their parents watch the hearing like they would fish in an aquarium.
But when the hearing intrude and a devastating secret is revealed, the cracks that begin to form in the sisters’ world will have consequences that span the rest of their lives. Separated from the family that ingrained in them a sense of uniqueness and alienation, Lili and Dori must relearn how to live, and how to tell their own stories.
Sly, surprising, and as fierce as its protagonists, Yaara Shehori’s Aquarium is a stunning debut that interrogates the practice of storytelling—and storyhearing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shehori's ambitious if uneven English-language debut, a tale of two misfit sisters from a rural Israeli village, too often loses itself in life's minutiae. Raised by reserved Anna and self-proclaimed spiritual prophet Alex, both deaf, Lili and Dori believe they are deaf as well. The family is surrounded by Alex's loyal followers from their village, where the sisters' mischief, including stealing mail to study handwriting, draws attention from outsiders. Soon, prying social workers discover Dori can in fact hear, and, citing mental abuse, they whisk the girl away from her family and place her in a boarding school. Older sister Lili, left behind, begins to explore the world of sound as well, with hearing aids. The remaining pages chronicle the separated sisters' schooling, romance, and moves to the U.S. for college. Shehori employs an arsenal of styles, leaping from first- to third-person perspectives and injecting letters between the sisters, yet the story takes its time to find a consistently engrossing stride, and the author's withholding of information occasionally leads to unnecessary confusion about where the sisters are and what's happened. Nevertheless, the fascinating Lili and Dori make this worth staying with.
