In This Sign [Library Binding]

Joanne Greenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2008

The highly acclaimed novel of a family whose love and courage enable them to survive in the silent world of the deaf.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Joanne Greenberg has taken the world of the deaf and made it an extension of everyone's experience-and made it a metaphor for childish innocence, for grown-up alienation and loneliness . . . and for the inability of all of us to truly listen and speak. "-The New York Times

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Joanne Greenberg is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed and popular novels, including I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Library Binding
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439513600
• ISBN-13: 978-1439513606
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,748,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can a true portrayal of life keep you reading? Yes!, April 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: In This Sign: The Highly Acclaimed Novel of a Family Whose Love and Courage Enable Them to Survive in the Silent World of the Deaf (Owl Books) (Paperback)

This book has a strange impact on the soul. It's a story thatmight be described as about deafness, since it's the story of deafcouple, their hearing daughter, and their struggles through life. And yet the comment I hear most frequently about this book--from old and young, women and men, those who can hear and those who can't--is this: "I could relate." It was the same way with me. As I read this book I kept thinking..."that's like my family--thats like MY parents--that's like me." This book isn't JUST about deafness...it's about what separates us, about the walls we put up around ourselves and how to break them down. The characters aren't heroic and they aren't extraordinary. They live, go to work, go to school, cry, laugh, have children, make and lose friends...and you can't put their story down because it's too much like yours. I never wanted to read about life, just life, until I saw it so well portrayed.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deaf Life, October 24, 2002

By 

Marsha Binau (Tecumseh,Oklahoma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In This Sign (Hardcover)

I am a Sign Language interpreter. I am with deaf people every day. This book is a wonderful, accurate account of how many deaf people feel about the hearing world.
Hearing people will never be able to understand how frustrating a deaf person's life often is. It is hard to have to go through an interpreter for all your business and often private transactions.
This book beautifully told the story from both sides, and I highly recommend it to anyone.
Thank you.
Marsha Binau

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In This Sign, June 18, 2002

By 

Britt Arnhild Lindland (Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In This Sign: The Highly Acclaimed Novel of a Family Whose Love and Courage Enable Them to Survive in the Silent World of the Deaf (Owl Books) (Paperback)

We all have signs, in spoken language, in the way we behave, in the way we act..... And the signs are important to understand ourselves and to understand others.

In this book Joanne Greenberg tells the story of a deaf couple and their hearing daughter. The story is so sad, I have cried alot, and at the same time I learn so much from the book. Janice and Abel are both deaf and because of a misunderstanding early in their married life, a misunderstanding because they are unable to hear, their lives make a tragic turn. This change their lives dramaticaly, and takes away most of the beauty. Their daughter can hear, and becomes the link for Janice and Abel to the world of hearers, a world they don't understand and don't trust.

This is the story about Janice and Abel who live in their own world. A world of signs. Signs they are ashamed to show. They are quite young when they leave deaf school to marry, and the book is a heartbreaking story of their fight for their lives in the hearing world.

A book you will learn alot from, a book you can't put down once you have started.

Britt Arnhild Lindland