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A review by leigh_ann_15_deaf
Invincible Summer by Hannah Moskowitz
0.5
Deaf reader reviewing books with deaf characters.
I don't think I can fully express how much I hate this book. It's almost a physical repulsion. There are no likable characters, and the least likable of all is the narrator, Chase.
But I'll do my best to focus on the representation of Gideon, the deaf character. I'm going to do my best to break this down, since there's so much to go over, and this representation is a hot, confusing mess. The author/narrator have so much to say about Gideon's being deaf, but there's practically nothing of substance.
The thing that stands out the most to me is how much the family seems to hate Gideon. They keep saying they love him, but here's the thing: Gideon can't win. It seems all he does is "make things get complicated" for the family.
The only thing that is abundantly clear is that Gideon is a metaphor for how bad at communicating this family is. They are constantly weaponizing and using Gideon against each other, going so far as to sending Gideon into the "war zone" of parental arguments to defuse the situation so they can cut the birthday cake and get Gideon to shut up. They all hate Gideon's voice--his "haunting" laugh, and (actual quote): "It so, so freaks me out when he speaks." But also, they all hate when he signs, and try to get to him stop by distracting him or giving him what he wants so they don't have to look at him. Oh, but get this: when he does stop signing, they also hate that!!
As far as communication goes, Claudia typically interprets for Gideon, which Chase considers to be a problematic habit because the family often says things Gideon "doesn't need to hear." If he doesn't need to know it, don't say it. It's literally that simple. At one point, Claudia officially stops interpreting for Gideon because Gideon decided to stop learning new signs, and it's "not cute anymore." This is where we find out that Gideon just had an ASL tutor who apparently taught the family baby signs. Eventually Claudia does start interpreting again and teaching him new signs, though it's not clear where Claudia is learning the signs. He picks them up quickly.
Dad is refusing to send him to a deaf institute, ostensibly because he doesn't want to spend the money, but it's reiterated several times that they just don't want to send Gideon away from the family. If Gideon is immersed in deaf culture, then Gideon is not "theirs" anymore.
But even when Gideon is "theirs," as in a member of their family, the family couldn't give less of a shit about communicating with him. See this quote: "Noah rubs the top of Gideon's head on the way to the cabinet. Noah knows the least sign language of all of us, since he was already twelve when Gideon was born and past that time when your brain's willing to learn a new language. Claude, who was five, picked it up just like she picked up English. Mom is great–the motherly instinct outweighed the closed-brain thing–while Dad's about the same as I am. It's all a matter of how hard ASL was for us, and has nothing to do, sadly, with how much we want to talk to Gideon, in which case Mom and Dad would both be fluent and Noah and I would be fine just to smile."
Specifically, that last sentence. How much does Chase want to talk to Gideon? Not at all. He's good to just smile at the kid.
Look, having siblings myself, I get that. But it's the hypocrisy of that statement compared to Chase's later assertions. You know, after his big ol' "change of heart."
Quote: "Before this year, before reading Camus with him, I never would have thought that there was much about Gideon to understand. I had no idea Noah went through the same change of heart I did. I had no idea he knew the ability to speak with Gideon was worth any real sacrifice. I sort of thought I was the only one who knew that."
So, until Gideon expressed interest in something Chase liked, he didn't think Gideon was an actual person. And Chase, who is one of the poorest signers in the family, thinks he's the only one who thought Gideon was worth talking to? When he has actively tried to suppress Claudia's interpreting, Gideon's signing and speech? Bullshit.
What led to this change of heart? Basically, Mom makes an appointment with a speech therapist for Gideon, but gives the responsibility of taking him to Noah, who is the least responsible member of the family. Perhaps she's sabotaging so Dad will be forced to agree to send Gideon to deaf institute? Anyway, Chase confronts him, and Noah says that Gideon needs neither speech nor new signs. Noah thinks Gideon is happy to not make sense or be able to communicate on a higher level than mime only his family can decipher.
The speech therapist gives them resources to improve Gideon's ASL proficiency, and Chase thinks it "isn't fair" because deaf kids should learn sign language. I do not understand what is happening here. Does he mean deaf people should be born with an innate sign language? What about the resources the therapist is giving them (including ASL tutors, videos, deaf community involvement, etc.) indicates to him that Gideon would not be learning signs? She does mention cochlear implants, but when they don't seem to like that idea she immediately forgets that topic and discusses ASL exclusively. I don't understand why Chase is internally whining about this. Big opinions from a kid who thinks the signs "no comment" and "true" are "uncomfortably close." All this just reinforces that his ASL skills are very low and he wants to keep Gideon at his own level rather than improve himself.
Anyway, Gideon gets to go to the deaf institute once Mom and Dad divorce. Now that Gideon actually has access to language, he matures and is able to sign proficiently, communicating age-appropriate ideas. He still has to use slow and simple signs with his family, which means the gloss--which is usually gibberish to me--is still rendered to broken English.
To follow up on Chase's whole change of heart about Gideon, here's another quote: "For the first time, we're all making real efforts to sign every time we talk, to do our best to translate every bit of the conversation for him. Because he cares now. He's got this air about him now, like he deserves to understand conversations. Like he thinks the things we talk about are important." Yeah gee, it's amazing that actually giving him access to the world makes him interested in more things like literature and conversations.
Chase mentioned before that Noah also had a change of heart. His own change is so profound that he announces his finally declared college major to the family: he's an ASL major, inspired by Gideon. Now their parents are upset because they don't know what job opportunities he will have. As though ASL interpreting jobs aren't one of the most highly paid in-demand jobs? Gideon also hates this idea, insisting that signs are his, not Noah's. That, at least, is understandable. His family purposefully deprives him of full access to language for the first seven years of his life, and then when he finally gets access his family decides he's worth it. Not before, but after. I'd be bitter, too!
Let's take a quick detour and talk about Lucy, the new baby, who is born on Chase's birthday.
When Lucy is born, Chase is the only one "willing" to ask if she is hearing. Barf. Because she's hearing, she's a "magic baby." Any time they discuss Lucy, there's a comment about how nice it is that she can hear, usually with a reference to Gideon being a "fluke." Later, when Lucy gets an ear infection, Chase completely overreacts, fearing that she might become deaf. Like it's the worst thing in the world. As though the priority is to save her hearing, not to just get rid of the infection so she feels better and gets healthy.
Anyway, back to Gideon, and one of the novel's "themes" (for lack of a better term) that bothers me so, so much.
At one point, Gideon turns on a bunch of singing toys at a store, and when people look Chase says, "I'm sorry my deaf brother has no sense of rhythm." The people who had turned to look? "They look away like they suddenly noticed he's disfigured." Later, Shannon (Chase's friend) suggests they get Gideon hearing aids, not because they would help him hear, but because they'd make his disability visible and people would stop staring.
Basically, the author is always mentioning how people are staring at Gideon, but he's only ever doing kid things, like messing with the toys in a toy shop or running and playing on the beach. The author makes it out like Gideon is flying around on Dumbo ears or something with how they're literally always gaping after him. There's no reason? Like if he were shrieking like a banshee in an ice cream shop, yeah I get it, but screaming playfully on the beach? The author is manufacturing stares where in reality there would not be stares. A person here or there will stare at someone signing in public, and some people stare at cute kids as their ovaries explode, but if Gideon is just existing as a six-year-old child, what the hell is up?
The author and/or narrator is projecting. Either they're the person who does stare at every person who seems different and are taking for granted that everyone else does too, or they're afraid of the staring and imagine that everyone is staring at them when in reality they're not. It's ridiculous.
There's only one more talking point I have for Gideon, since I've decided to let quite a few things go--including how when Gideon is asleep in bed, he can tell who's moving around from the vibrations of their footsteps, or how hearing people are obsessed with having deaf characters "read" lips with their fingertips, which also happens here when Chase reads Gideon a bedtime story. No, the last point is about Gideon's balance issues.
The author got one thing right: deaf people typically can't keep their balance. The annoying thing is that Gideon's family is obsessed with, almost pathological about, Gideon's getting dizzy. They are constantly calling attention to it--"Careful! Gideon will get dizzy," or "Go make sure Gideon doesn't get dizzy," and so on. It came up so often that I started thinking, "What, is he going to die if he gets dizzy?!"
Well, he dies. But not necessarily because he got dizzy.
One night (Chase and Lucy's birthday), Gideon begs to go down to the beach and the kids all go. Noah says he'll watch Gideon, but he watches his girlfriend Melinda instead. Gideon disappears, and they frantically search. The story skips suddenly to one year later, but it becomes clear that Gideon is dead, having drowned silently and quickly.
So, the shock factor is that Gideon, the deaf child who is finally getting access to language after deprivation and practical neglect for almost all of his life, dies because his family isn't watching him. So now we deal with the fallout, which is the narrator feeling depressed about the whole thing. Now that his brother is dead, Chase regrets not learning to sign better. He hates the universe for making Gideon deaf, then for taking him away on Chase's birthday, and then for giving him Gideon in the first place.
Look, these are relatable teen angsty feelings, but considering the author decided to make Gideon a metaphor and to make the family absolute audist douchebags towards him, I don't feel bad for the narrator at all. He was the one who was fine to never speak to Gideon (at least until Gideon said he liked Chase's favorite author). Now he's sad because he can't yell at Gideon anymore? Go screw yourself. As for Noah, who wanted to become an ASL major? Nah, he switches his major to Engineering.
Oh, but the siblings "have a habit" of speaking to Lucy in ASL patterns. So now, after fucking up Gideon's communication skills, they have a new mission: fuck up their baby sister's communication skills. She's going to get to kindergarten speaking English words in ASL grammar, and no one's going to be able to communicate with her effectively. Congrats. You're raising a new metaphor to replace the one that died through neglect.
In the acknowledgments, the author notes the D.C. and Providence, R.I. Deaf communities and hopes to have made them proud. It's not clear whether they had any role in the creation, characterization, or plot surrounding Gideon, but I sure hope they didn't.
Link to ranked list of deaf characters in fiction: https://modcast.blog/2022/12/17/ranked-deaf-characters-in-fiction/
I don't think I can fully express how much I hate this book. It's almost a physical repulsion. There are no likable characters, and the least likable of all is the narrator, Chase.
But I'll do my best to focus on the representation of Gideon, the deaf character. I'm going to do my best to break this down, since there's so much to go over, and this representation is a hot, confusing mess. The author/narrator have so much to say about Gideon's being deaf, but there's practically nothing of substance.
The thing that stands out the most to me is how much the family seems to hate Gideon. They keep saying they love him, but here's the thing: Gideon can't win. It seems all he does is "make things get complicated" for the family.
The only thing that is abundantly clear is that Gideon is a metaphor for how bad at communicating this family is. They are constantly weaponizing and using Gideon against each other, going so far as to sending Gideon into the "war zone" of parental arguments to defuse the situation so they can cut the birthday cake and get Gideon to shut up. They all hate Gideon's voice--his "haunting" laugh, and (actual quote): "It so, so freaks me out when he speaks." But also, they all hate when he signs, and try to get to him stop by distracting him or giving him what he wants so they don't have to look at him. Oh, but get this: when he does stop signing, they also hate that!!
As far as communication goes, Claudia typically interprets for Gideon, which Chase considers to be a problematic habit because the family often says things Gideon "doesn't need to hear." If he doesn't need to know it, don't say it. It's literally that simple. At one point, Claudia officially stops interpreting for Gideon because Gideon decided to stop learning new signs, and it's "not cute anymore." This is where we find out that Gideon just had an ASL tutor who apparently taught the family baby signs. Eventually Claudia does start interpreting again and teaching him new signs, though it's not clear where Claudia is learning the signs. He picks them up quickly.
Dad is refusing to send him to a deaf institute, ostensibly because he doesn't want to spend the money, but it's reiterated several times that they just don't want to send Gideon away from the family. If Gideon is immersed in deaf culture, then Gideon is not "theirs" anymore.
But even when Gideon is "theirs," as in a member of their family, the family couldn't give less of a shit about communicating with him. See this quote: "Noah rubs the top of Gideon's head on the way to the cabinet. Noah knows the least sign language of all of us, since he was already twelve when Gideon was born and past that time when your brain's willing to learn a new language. Claude, who was five, picked it up just like she picked up English. Mom is great–the motherly instinct outweighed the closed-brain thing–while Dad's about the same as I am. It's all a matter of how hard ASL was for us, and has nothing to do, sadly, with how much we want to talk to Gideon, in which case Mom and Dad would both be fluent and Noah and I would be fine just to smile."
Specifically, that last sentence. How much does Chase want to talk to Gideon? Not at all. He's good to just smile at the kid.
Look, having siblings myself, I get that. But it's the hypocrisy of that statement compared to Chase's later assertions. You know, after his big ol' "change of heart."
Quote: "Before this year, before reading Camus with him, I never would have thought that there was much about Gideon to understand. I had no idea Noah went through the same change of heart I did. I had no idea he knew the ability to speak with Gideon was worth any real sacrifice. I sort of thought I was the only one who knew that."
So, until Gideon expressed interest in something Chase liked, he didn't think Gideon was an actual person. And Chase, who is one of the poorest signers in the family, thinks he's the only one who thought Gideon was worth talking to? When he has actively tried to suppress Claudia's interpreting, Gideon's signing and speech? Bullshit.
What led to this change of heart? Basically, Mom makes an appointment with a speech therapist for Gideon, but gives the responsibility of taking him to Noah, who is the least responsible member of the family. Perhaps she's sabotaging so Dad will be forced to agree to send Gideon to deaf institute? Anyway, Chase confronts him, and Noah says that Gideon needs neither speech nor new signs. Noah thinks Gideon is happy to not make sense or be able to communicate on a higher level than mime only his family can decipher.
The speech therapist gives them resources to improve Gideon's ASL proficiency, and Chase thinks it "isn't fair" because deaf kids should learn sign language. I do not understand what is happening here. Does he mean deaf people should be born with an innate sign language? What about the resources the therapist is giving them (including ASL tutors, videos, deaf community involvement, etc.) indicates to him that Gideon would not be learning signs? She does mention cochlear implants, but when they don't seem to like that idea she immediately forgets that topic and discusses ASL exclusively. I don't understand why Chase is internally whining about this. Big opinions from a kid who thinks the signs "no comment" and "true" are "uncomfortably close." All this just reinforces that his ASL skills are very low and he wants to keep Gideon at his own level rather than improve himself.
Anyway, Gideon gets to go to the deaf institute once Mom and Dad divorce. Now that Gideon actually has access to language, he matures and is able to sign proficiently, communicating age-appropriate ideas. He still has to use slow and simple signs with his family, which means the gloss--which is usually gibberish to me--is still rendered to broken English.
To follow up on Chase's whole change of heart about Gideon, here's another quote: "For the first time, we're all making real efforts to sign every time we talk, to do our best to translate every bit of the conversation for him. Because he cares now. He's got this air about him now, like he deserves to understand conversations. Like he thinks the things we talk about are important." Yeah gee, it's amazing that actually giving him access to the world makes him interested in more things like literature and conversations.
Chase mentioned before that Noah also had a change of heart. His own change is so profound that he announces his finally declared college major to the family: he's an ASL major, inspired by Gideon. Now their parents are upset because they don't know what job opportunities he will have. As though ASL interpreting jobs aren't one of the most highly paid in-demand jobs? Gideon also hates this idea, insisting that signs are his, not Noah's. That, at least, is understandable. His family purposefully deprives him of full access to language for the first seven years of his life, and then when he finally gets access his family decides he's worth it. Not before, but after. I'd be bitter, too!
Let's take a quick detour and talk about Lucy, the new baby, who is born on Chase's birthday.
When Lucy is born, Chase is the only one "willing" to ask if she is hearing. Barf. Because she's hearing, she's a "magic baby." Any time they discuss Lucy, there's a comment about how nice it is that she can hear, usually with a reference to Gideon being a "fluke." Later, when Lucy gets an ear infection, Chase completely overreacts, fearing that she might become deaf. Like it's the worst thing in the world. As though the priority is to save her hearing, not to just get rid of the infection so she feels better and gets healthy.
Anyway, back to Gideon, and one of the novel's "themes" (for lack of a better term) that bothers me so, so much.
At one point, Gideon turns on a bunch of singing toys at a store, and when people look Chase says, "I'm sorry my deaf brother has no sense of rhythm." The people who had turned to look? "They look away like they suddenly noticed he's disfigured." Later, Shannon (Chase's friend) suggests they get Gideon hearing aids, not because they would help him hear, but because they'd make his disability visible and people would stop staring.
Basically, the author is always mentioning how people are staring at Gideon, but he's only ever doing kid things, like messing with the toys in a toy shop or running and playing on the beach. The author makes it out like Gideon is flying around on Dumbo ears or something with how they're literally always gaping after him. There's no reason? Like if he were shrieking like a banshee in an ice cream shop, yeah I get it, but screaming playfully on the beach? The author is manufacturing stares where in reality there would not be stares. A person here or there will stare at someone signing in public, and some people stare at cute kids as their ovaries explode, but if Gideon is just existing as a six-year-old child, what the hell is up?
The author and/or narrator is projecting. Either they're the person who does stare at every person who seems different and are taking for granted that everyone else does too, or they're afraid of the staring and imagine that everyone is staring at them when in reality they're not. It's ridiculous.
There's only one more talking point I have for Gideon, since I've decided to let quite a few things go--including how when Gideon is asleep in bed, he can tell who's moving around from the vibrations of their footsteps, or how hearing people are obsessed with having deaf characters "read" lips with their fingertips, which also happens here when Chase reads Gideon a bedtime story. No, the last point is about Gideon's balance issues.
The author got one thing right: deaf people typically can't keep their balance. The annoying thing is that Gideon's family is obsessed with, almost pathological about, Gideon's getting dizzy. They are constantly calling attention to it--"Careful! Gideon will get dizzy," or "Go make sure Gideon doesn't get dizzy," and so on. It came up so often that I started thinking, "What, is he going to die if he gets dizzy?!"
Well, he dies. But not necessarily because he got dizzy.
One night (Chase and Lucy's birthday), Gideon begs to go down to the beach and the kids all go. Noah says he'll watch Gideon, but he watches his girlfriend Melinda instead. Gideon disappears, and they frantically search. The story skips suddenly to one year later, but it becomes clear that Gideon is dead, having drowned silently and quickly.
So, the shock factor is that Gideon, the deaf child who is finally getting access to language after deprivation and practical neglect for almost all of his life, dies because his family isn't watching him. So now we deal with the fallout, which is the narrator feeling depressed about the whole thing. Now that his brother is dead, Chase regrets not learning to sign better. He hates the universe for making Gideon deaf, then for taking him away on Chase's birthday, and then for giving him Gideon in the first place.
Look, these are relatable teen angsty feelings, but considering the author decided to make Gideon a metaphor and to make the family absolute audist douchebags towards him, I don't feel bad for the narrator at all. He was the one who was fine to never speak to Gideon (at least until Gideon said he liked Chase's favorite author). Now he's sad because he can't yell at Gideon anymore? Go screw yourself. As for Noah, who wanted to become an ASL major? Nah, he switches his major to Engineering.
Oh, but the siblings "have a habit" of speaking to Lucy in ASL patterns. So now, after fucking up Gideon's communication skills, they have a new mission: fuck up their baby sister's communication skills. She's going to get to kindergarten speaking English words in ASL grammar, and no one's going to be able to communicate with her effectively. Congrats. You're raising a new metaphor to replace the one that died through neglect.
In the acknowledgments, the author notes the D.C. and Providence, R.I. Deaf communities and hopes to have made them proud. It's not clear whether they had any role in the creation, characterization, or plot surrounding Gideon, but I sure hope they didn't.
Link to ranked list of deaf characters in fiction: https://modcast.blog/2022/12/17/ranked-deaf-characters-in-fiction/