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Hear No Evil: Shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger 2023

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Possibly this was the purpose of this but it felt incredibly out of character for a character, Richard, and his wife, who talk throughout of empowering deaf people to consider such a controlling method.

Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. Especially so as Jean does not come from a Deaf family, so she had little actual exposure to sign language until she was an adult and moved to Glasgow, where she found a Deaf community. There are, she has written, hardly any deaf users of sign language in fiction, and the few that there are ‘range from the patronising to the absurd; childlike victims who are “rescued” by the hearing protagonist, or one-dimensional characters whose lack of hearing is used simply as a device to move the plot forward’. It was a cold February and the thick stone walls of the building were damp with rain, yet Robert found that he was sweating under his woollen coat.Robert Kinniburgh is a compassionate and humane main character, but it is with Jean Campbell - a young, Deaf woman accused of throwing her child into the river Clyde - that the reader's heart will come to linger. We also get a character who very much represents the “giftedly disabled” stance, which is extremely weird to me, but I know it existed and still exists. Additionally, the focus on the struggles faced by deaf people that were exacerbated when compared to our modern times and the different attitudes prevailing towards them 200 years ago were also strong themes I enjoyed. Based on a landmark case in Scottish legal history, Hear No Evil a richly atmospheric story of a woman's refusal to be identified by her deafness. She was facing the gallows, there’s no point in being reluctant to tell Robert anything and his first few meetings with her seemed cut short for no reason other than artificially drawing out the plot.

I sometimes struggle a little with historical fiction which is often so riveting, well written and interesting but so many aspects are made up and I end up struggling to separate fact from fiction. The fact that Jean was a deaf woman adds such a unique concept to this that I’ve never see explored before.Jean has gone through traumatic experiences, badly used by unscrupulous people only too happy to take advantage. The book focuses on Jean Campbell, a deaf woman from the Hebrides accused of throwing her baby in a river in Glasgow and it’s set in 1817. Nevertheless, her evocations of 19th century Scottish life are very compelling, and readers will learn much about the history of the deaf, the emergence of sign language in Britain and the state of education for the deaf in the 19th century.

This is historical fiction (although at the end found out it is based on a real case) about a deaf woman that has been charged with the murder of a baby and resulting in the subsequent case and trial. It has everything you could possibly want from historical crime; murderers, madhouses, the crushing pressure of class barriers and a crime that spins across a true cross-section of Scottish social history. While I can’t comment on accuracy, Smith had a “sensitivity reader” go through the manuscript to advise on correct and appropriate descriptions of deaf culture, which I think is great, and should be done for more books. Campbell's deafness is the axis upon which the book turns, enabling Smith to show us both the prejudices and assumptions made about the Deaf community at the time, and insights into the fascinating evolution of signed language - the key by which Kinniburgh begins to earn Jean's trust and unlock her story. The jobs of the people in the coach with him back to Edinburgh (an engineer draining Nor’ Loch, a brewer setting up in Fountainbridge); once there, the timetable of the deaf school he runs and the anticipation among the pupils for the following month’s balloon flight over Arthur’s Seat by James Sadler.Because ‘the name is common in towns or villages throughout the country where there once was a row of tumbledown cottages infested with rats’. He is our eyes and ears in the story, following Jean’s life in the poverty stricken slums of Glasgow, experiencing her difficulties and finding out what happened in the final days before she came to be alone on the Old Bridge with her baby. This was an interesting read, however it unfortunately failed to consistently hold my attention, the pacing was just a little too slow and seemed at odds with the urgency of the matter at hand.

Through Kinniburgh and his acquaintances we get a fascinating insight into the deaf community and the development of sign language which I enjoyed greatly. The book was just packed with detail and writing that took you to the busy, dirty streets of early 19th century Edinburgh and Glasgow.A striking and stylish literary page-turner that breathes life into the past, illuminating a fascinating corner of history by revealing its lost voices and contemporary resonance. Thank you NetGalley and John Murray Press for my e-arc of this title, received in exchange for an honest review.

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