A debut novel following two sisters, both deaf and raised in seclusion
by deaf parents, and the shattering consequences that unfold when that
isolation comes to an end.
Sisters Lili and Dori Ackerman are deaf. Their parents--beautiful,
despondent Anna; fearsome and admired Alex--are deaf, too. Alex, a scrap
metal collector and sometime prophet, opposes any attempt to integrate
with the hearing; to escape their destructive influence, the girls are
educated at home. Deafness is no disability, their father says, but an
alternative way of life, preferable by far to that of the strident,
hypocritical hearing.
Living in a universe of their own creation, feared by and disdainful of
the other children on their block, Lili and Dori grow up semi-feral.
Lili writes down everything that happens--just the facts. And Dori, the
reader, follows her older sister wherever she goes. United against a
hostile and alien world, the girls and their parents watch the hearing
like they would fish in an aquarium.
But when the hearing intrude and a devastating secret is revealed, the
cracks that begin to form in the sisters' world will have consequences
that span the rest of their lives. Separated from the family that
ingrained in them a sense of uniqueness and alienation, Lili and Dori
must relearn how to live, and how to tell their own stories.
Sly, surprising, and as fierce as its protagonists, Yaara Shehori's
Aquarium is a stunning debut that interrogates the practice of
storytelling--and storyhearing.
