Customer Reviews

The Sign for Drowning: A Novel

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Well, I've just finished Rachel Stolzman's The Sign for Drowning, and am in the stunned place an outstanding story leaves you. It is a book that I couldn't put down and then read more and more slowly as I approached and tried to delay its inevitable end. It is A Favorite, absolutely, and one that I'll read again.

I mean, I want to adopt a deaf child. I want to adopt Adrea.

What I love about Stolzman's voice is its grace. She maintains a poetic facility and restraint throughout A Sign for Drowning, and is worth studying to see how it's done when it's done right. No word is wasted, and nothing sounds precious. The reader is left to experience. And what a story! It moves, it surprises, it takes you in immediately.

Rachel Stolzman is a very talented writer, and I cannot wait to see what comes next.

'The Sign for Drowning' is an emotionally honest, sincere story about how far reaching a tragedy can be. Stolzman captures the sad, innocent reality of a little girl who suddenly finds herself alone after her sister's tragic drowning and then tells the story of the adult woman who is still haunted by the accident. I found Ana's struggle to embrace motherhood especially interesting, a complex portrayal of a female character.

Review: The Sign For Drowning
By Rachel Stolzman
Trumpeter, 2008


There are people who have yet to experience a large loss, who have yet to be given over to grief. They have yet to learn about enduring and re-entering into life. This novel provides several insights into what they will need for that task.

Rachel Stolzman's heroine, Anna, witnesses the unexpected loss of her younger sister as she disappears into the ocean surf, and the frantic searching by her parents to find and save little Megan. Each of them then takes away their own personal version of the emptiness and guilt that follows.

Anna discovers the silent symbolism of sign language and sustains her own connection to Megan by steadfastly signing to her somewhere in the muted world under the waves. As her mother withdraws further into a separate mourning, Anna matures and uses her skill of signing to become a teacher of deaf children.

Just as suddenly as her sister disappeared, Anna is confronted by the needs of a deaf girl. The two tentatively share themselves with one another. As they connect and communicate, a profound story quietly unfolds, uniting them and creating a thoughtful and memorable focus on our deepest desires and values.

Rachel Stolzman's first novel is captivating. In her straightforward writing, she acutely describes the far reaching drama of Megan's drowning, and then draws the reader into the personal pain of her characters. The major themes of loss, grief and emotional abandonment are well developed as Stolzman shows how tragic events shape the lives of Megan's parents and sister, Anna. But it's as the magical connection between Anna and her adopted daughter, Adrea, is explored that her book turns into a tender love story. You can feel their unbreakable bond as they grow together and create their shared sense of family.

a gem of a book by a first time author - Ms. Stolzman writes a story of emotional attachments and grief overcome by love - a moving story wherein you feel as though the author is talking just to you and you are enthralled by her story - bravo can't wait until her next one

This is a poignant and heartfelt novel. The story is evocative and the characters inspire. I can't wait for more!

With a rich accumulation of detail, this remarkable first novel charts the varied reactions, within a family, to the death of a child, the desperate yearning to communicate with a lost sister that leads the main character to working with the deaf, and, as an illuminating bonus, the subtle nuances of the day-to-day life of the deaf. Powerfully, beautifully done.

Rachel Stolzman's first novel, "The Sign for Drowning," beautifully illustrates how love, loss, longing, and loneliness can bind people together just as quickly and easily pulling them apart. In poetic, honest, vulnerable prose, Stolzman weaves a story as fluid as the ocean that serves as its backdrop and shows us how one woman uses the language of the Deaf to communicate with her heart.

I was very excited when I was sent a copy of this book to read and review and it did not disappoint. This is the story of Anna, who at the age of eight, on what was deemed to be an ordinary family beach vacation, witnesses her younger sister's drowning in the ocean. The guilt that plagues Anna after this tragedy is central to this story line. Her powerless struggle continues as her parents are lost to her as well, consumed in their own personal grief. Anna finds solace as she learns sign language as a means of communicating with her dead sister.

Many fascinating characters enter this story, providing the novel with dimension. A couple of twists spice the story up. Anna's plunge into motherhood by adopting Adrea shows compassion and bravery, while providing a bit of education into technological advances succoring the hearing impaired. Throughout the heart of this novel remains Anna's quest to trust herself again, regain power over her own life and allow herself permission to love.

The characters were inspirational but, for unexplainable reasons, I had difficulty connecting with them and never felt completely immersed within the book. Yet the writing has a quiet beauty to it. It's as if reading someone's personal thoughts, allowing the raw emotions to ring authentic.

This book is a visceral and very real look at the life of a woman whose life has been defined by the loss of her baby sister, Megan, through accidental drowning when she was 8 years old. Anna has, since that day, been lost in a world of uncertainly and grief, ever searching for someone or something to anchor her in the world. After meeting Adrea, a deaf child who was abandoned by her teenaged parents, in her centre for deaf children, Anna's life seems to take on a new meaning but grief still looms large, refusing to leave her family in peace.

I really enjoyed this novel - the narrative is beautifully written, reflecting Stolzman's poetic background, but without being overly lyrical - I'm a fan of a well-written sentence or a beautiful image but I hate being beaten over the head with a metaphor. It's a fine line and one that Sign balances brilliantly. For example, one of my favourite sentences was this stunner:


"She saw herself, a baby mermaid, hair streaming back, a last oxygen bubble escaping from her mouth. There were monsoon rains with every turn of her neck. Earthquakes broke fault lines with each kick of her legs. Every thrashing of her arms brought forest fires somewhere. Opening her mouth caused volcanoes to erupt.

In this way, she left us." (Page 62)


Another thing I really appreciated about this book was that Anna's character was so well-realised. The link between her sister's drowning and her fascination with sign language - a key aspect of her character - is not immediately obvious and I wondered for the first few chapters how it was all going to tie in together but once revealed it's ingenious. First person confessional voice of Anna allows the reader to track along with her thoughts as she copes with grief and faces the effects it has had on her life, particularly her relationship with her mother.

Mother-daughter relationships lay at the heart of this novel as it is this relationship, both as the daughter and later the adoptive mother, that define Anna. Stolzman investigates this most emotionally fraught relationship with both delicacy and a clear eye, enabling the reader to see both Anna and her own mother as both mothers and a flawed human beings - something not easily achieved as too often portrayals of mothers become one dimensional or fall into the perfect mother/evil mother dichotomy.

The only regret I had about this book was that it wasn't longer - I felt that there were places in the novel that could have been lingered over a bit more, even if only for the reader to absorb what had happened but it felt occasionally as if we were being hustled along. This doesn't really detract from the novel - just at times I wish I'd had a bit more space and time within it to really enjoy what was happening.

Overall, I loved this novel. It is beautifully written and a thoroughly enjoyable first novel. It takes on some very big issues and handles them with finesse and intelligence. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, this is one I would highly recommend that you read. It's one that will stay with me for a long time.