Speechless

by Tom Lanoye

Biography:

Tom Lanoye was born in 1958.

He was the son of a butcher in Sint Niklaas, East Flanders, where he went to school. He studied Germanic Philology and Sociology at the 

Universitry of Ghent.

Tom Lanoye is an award-winning, highly acclaimed Belgian novelist, poet, columnist, performer, screenwriter and playwright.

He became famous for his prose and drama, as well as his politically and socially engaged columns and his unique cabaret-style performances. 

He is one of Belgium's most celebrated, most popular and well-regarded Flemish authors, widely read - not only in his language area, and famous in Europe. With this book you can see why: he's a master at creating character, setting scenes, picking absolutely perfect evocative details. Since the succes of “Speechless” in 2011, French-speaking Belgium was immediately taken by the book.

Almost 135,000 copies were sold in Holland and Belgium alone.

Speechless (2009) was awarded several major literary prizes and has been voted one of the most popular 'new classics' in Flemish literature.

Tom lives in Antwerp and Capetown, South Africa.

His work has been translated into fifteen languages and performed in 20 countries.He is the author of over 50 works of poetry, drama and fiction.

Six of his novels have been filmed.

SPEECHLESS:

 An intimate mother-son portrait tells a universal story.

This book is translated from Dutch, but if that line were missing from the title page you wouldn't know it. Speechless is translated from Dutch by Paul Vincent, who skilfully translated Lanoye’s rich style.

On the very first page:

  “She lost first her speech, then her dignity, then her heartbeat”

With these words, Tom Lanoye compresses in only one sentence, the tragic end of his mother.

Speechless is a touching memoir about his beloved diva of a mother’s final years. After a stroke, she - an obsessive amateur actress - loses her ability to speak. Flamboyant, proud and dominant, Josée is unrecognizable after this stroke, which strips her of the ability to speak and express herself with the expansiveness for which she was known. Slowly but inevitably she deteriorates, less and less able to communicate with her loved ones.

Her son, the author, is deeply touched by her loss of speech and reconstructs her life in the abundance of language that used to be hers.

With style and grace, Lanoye weaves together autobiography, testimony and fiction to recount the last years of his mother's life and the years before her stroke. Lanoye employs rich prose to paint a colorful picture of growing up and coming to terms with his homosexuality.

This is an ‘unadorned account’, an informal, honest testimony of a mother by her son. 

Lanoye's book is often comic, as he describes his childhood home, his siblings and colorful neighbours, and above all, his parents.

Speechless is life itself, a mixture of tragedy and irresistible humour. It is a lively fresco of a generation, a period, a life style.

Our group very much appreciated this book. 

There were many scenes that reminded us so much of our families and our own stories.

Some of us have known someone who languished at the end of their life and wasn’t able to help him/herself anymore.

Of course, at one point you also think: What if this happens to me?

“Speechless" is a book that sings and shines and hums and growls and resonates and amuses and rages and smothers and hurts. It makes you love, it makes you angry, it fills you with vicarious shame”.

Tzum

Loeky