KEEP LISTENING
By
Frances Warfield, who used much of her own life- and her own self- in her earlier novel, Cotton In My Ears, here writes an appealing autobiographical account of her own revolt against the handicap which for many years she did not admit deafness. ""Hairtrigger sensitive"", to the word deaf which could be spelled dead, she used all kinds of evasions to fool the world at large, her friends, her husband. And over and above the fear of betrayal- there were the many other fears which haunt this special world walled off by silence. A first surrender brought her to the Nichie School of Lipreading- a partial crutch; a second, to a hearing aid, but although wired for sound, she was still touchy (at a time when mechanical aids still had a certain stigma); and finally- always afraid- to the fenestration operations which restored her hearing altogether- deprived her to an extent of the career she had made of being deaf, while on the other hand devoting much of it to helping others through the N.Y. League for the Hard of Hearing..... A story told in personal, vulnerable, likable terms- which will give a hopeful, positive answer to many others who have spent their lives saying ""What"".