An extremely interesting concept but for me flawed by the novel's flow and construction.
I had no idea Alexander Graham Bell was involved with teaching deaf young people. I also found myself riveted by the differences between speech reading, which is only possible 40% of the time, and sign language,
Ellen Lark has been deaf since childhood and is happy in a school that practices sign language. She then gets sent to a school where Bell is her tutor. Here sign language is frowned on, and the only thing that matters is speech reading.
Ellen fancies she is close to Bell, and a party to his various inventions. The side plot around patents, conspiracies and the involvement of a deaf friend of Ellen's, Frank, is where the novel gets confusing. From the start we are in different timelines and exposed to characters in future confrontations with Ellen. I found myself scratching my head about who the different men were, and, early on, exactly why Ellen became resentful of Bell.
I persevered and liked the overall theme with Ellen and the deaf community being given a voice. But it could have been so much better.

I can't wait for this to come out and for y'all to lose your minds. if you had doubts about preordering, don't. you're going to want to read this one. I raced through it this weekend.

This is a very self-assured and cleverly written debut novel. Written from the perspective of the main character - Ellen Lark - who is deaf, it is set at the time of the invention of the telephone and tells a story I knew nothing about. Highly recommend.

Eileen had Scarlett fever as a child which left her deaf.

I enjoyed the beginning of the book and found the description of her isolation excellent. As the book continued, however, I found it rather dry and the jumping between time periods didn’t work for me.

“I was called Ellen Lark in the days when I knew my name without needing to look for it. Back then my name came around doorways, down staircases, across fields, from the
stoop where my mother stood hollering news of our dinner- time. I didn’t need to see any person to know I was summoned..”

That was from the beginning when I was enjoying the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This is the first Sarah Marsh book I have read and I can say it won't be my last! I really love reading books that make me think about things I've never thought of before and this is one of them. I can admit I have never really thought about speech and hearing in the way I did reading this. A great exploration of words and sounds.

This is a historical novel which centres on the role of a young deaf woman Ellen in the invention of the telephone. The book flicks between now and then in London and Boston. Ellen is being sent to speech school. The book explores the inventor Alexander Bell's input in the telephone as well as education with the deaf. I really liked Ellen as a character and immediately knew I was in for a ride as she seems to trust people too much. I will be recommending this book to others.

I found this hard to keep going with at times, there's such an interesting story here but I wasn't grabbed by it

Well-written and I did enjoy it to start with. But I found the back and forth irritating as it littered the back-story with spoilers - why not tell the story as it happened? Also, I found some of the detail very dry and had me skim reading. A shame, as it could have been a really good book.

The synopsis of this book really intrigued me. While I'm not part of the non hearing community I was interested learn.
But sadly this didn't work for me. While I enjoyed learning and seeing from a non hearing characters POV the writing was far to dry and slow paced for me to stay invested.
I needed something to keep me caring about this story but it was missing.

Scarlet fever caused Ellen to lose her hearing. This book conveys a clear picture of what this meant in her life. Alexander Bell, the inventor of the telephone, whose rights as an inventor are being contested, and with whom Ellen researched a type of communication known as Visible Speech, is heavily involved in it. Bell wants Ellen to defend him, but the tale of her relationships with him is not entirely positive.

The novel is written from Ellen's point of view. Sarah Marsh does an excellent job of explaining what deafness may be (and I have hearing difficulties myself). However, I thought the story to be somewhat slow-paced at times, and I did not enjoy the time jumps.

‘A Sign of Her Own’ is a historical fiction novel centred around a young woman, Ellen, who loses her hearing as a result of scarlet fever as a young child. It offers a compelling glimpse into history, presenting a well-researched narrative and an enjoyable read. It provided me with valuable insights into the deaf community and the story itself was undeniably touching. The book is worth a read however, I wouldn’t place in in my top 5 reads of the year.

O M W. This book. I feel humbled, honoured, in awe.
This is a stunning 1st novel. I’m always intrigued to see the world from another’s perspective. And to want justice for those that are deserving of it.
Based on true events/persons that were wronged by the man who invented the telephone…this is a tale of standing up for oneself, knowing your worth, and becoming empowered ⭐️

I enjoyed reading this book. It was an interesting read. Thank you to the writer, publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book

A fascinating examination of the way the deaf have been treated in the past. It is heartbreaking to read about the dismissive attitude to signing - with children being punished for using sign language - and the insistence upon speech. My sister is deaf and I remember that the family were discouraged from using BSL, as even then (the fifties UK), oralism was considered more important and something to aim for.

This is a compelling novel, bringing together ideas about Alexander Graham Bell (who taught a system called Visible Speech), the controversy over the invention of the telephone, and the story of a deaf woman in the 19th century. I particularly enjoyed the explanations of various signs which has helped my signing vocabulary.

A thoughtful and intelligent book.

"A Sign of Her Own" is a novel by Sarah Marsh. It tells the story of Ellen Lark, a deaf woman who was once a student of Alexander Graham Bell. Bell taught her how to speak using his technique called Visible Speech, and confided in her about his dream of producing a device which would transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. However, Ellen believes that Bell betrayed her and other deaf pupils in pursuit of ambition and personal gain, and cut Ellen off from a community in which she had come to feel truly at home. The novel explores themes of deaf identity, betrayal, and the hidden history of the deaf community in the invention of the telephone.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with the ARC of this book.

I requested an advanced copy of this book as my husband has congenital deafness and is very distantly related to Alexander Graham Bell. Also, one of the best and most interesting biographies I have ever read was Sounds Out of Silence based in his life. Visiting Baddeck in Nova Scotia a few years ago and seeing where he lived was very special, and the museum dedicated to his many inventions is fascinating.

I found this book over detailed and a very slow read. Too many descriptions of the signs used and the details of the Visible Speech lessons. I’m not sure what it was trying to achieve but it turned into a real slog to get to the end. Which was a bit of a damp squib. I did like the way that the author portrayed deaf people’s isolation in a hearing world and how they developed their own sense of community. And she had a few good turns of phrase. But I would have liked to have seen the Historic Notes but they weren’t included with this advance copy. With thanks to NetGalley, the publishers and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book

I have hearing difficulties and attend lipreading classes – essential when loud music is the backdrop in restaurants and pubs. Voices get louder to counter the volume and the music volume goes up … and I dislike being left out of conversations! Hence, I was keen to read this book. It chronicles the sadness and separation of being deaf and captures the often hilarious misreads in a lipreading conversation. The writing is delectable and embraces the times and society and introduces characters who represent the attitudes of the day. I was intrigued by this history of Alexander Graham Bell but confess that after the healthy pace of the first third of the book, things slowed down and I struggled at times to read on. The extensive passages about Bell and his aims might well have had more impact on me had there been fewer. The lively relationship with Frank and his family was fun and telling. I’d have liked more! The reverse use of quotation marks – using them to identify ‘dialogue’ exchanged in notebooks and not for actual speech was a clever reminder that although deaf or mute people do not (mostly) communicate via oral speech, they have voices that should be heard.
I am grateful for the opportunity to read this ARC and I would like the challenges for those with hearing issued to be more widely known and addressed.

A well-researched story but a little slow at times. I found the style of writing a bit stilted - but probably true to the period it is set in. Having just visited Baddeck in Nova Scotia where Alexander Graham Bell had his holiday home, I was fascinated to learn a different aspect to his life and work. It took perseverance to get to the end of this book as I found my interest drifting but all-in-all it is an interesting tale.

This was fascinating! Many years ago now I worked on the outskirts of the deaf community and was initially astounded at the politics and debates about use of BSL, SSE (sign supported English), use of speech and lip reading. This book addresses this plus skirmishes around the patents on inventing the telephone. The pace of the book was a little slow and I’m not sure I would have followed the story had I not already been versed in the issues at hand. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

The silent world of the deaf is, in modern times a marvel of technological advances and opportunities, where we see the afflicted overcoming obstacles to their connections to the hearing world. This was not the case in the nineteenth century, where shame and ridicule followed a child with little or no hearing. In this story we feel all the disconnections from the narrator herself, because we share this lack of understanding of what is being spoken, and the confusion of interests behind the inventions of Alex Bell. We share her suspicions that she is a pawn in the deceptions and intrigue in the application for patents. It is very clever to put the reader in her shoes, missing what is being expressed in the words of others, isolating her from the hearing world. I struggled at the start because of this, but it soon became evident that there was a reason for this. She develops into a very strong character despite her circumstances, and I ended up full of admiration for this very clever book.

This book was interesting from a historical perspective, particularly for me as I was completely unaware of Alexander Graham Bell’s involvement in developing a form of “visible speech” for the deaf in the 19th century and also in its coverage of the debate about the “right” way to teach deaf people to communicate. I found that aspect really fascinating - the idea that for a time using signs was considered primitive and was looked down upon, and that to be considered equals the deaf needed to learn to lip read and mimic spoken speech so as to fully fit in. Purely to learn about this slice of history, I think the book is worth a read. The story is told through Ellen, a young woman who loses her hearing at 4 after an illness. We see her navigate trying to become independent in a world that always treats her as lesser-than, and the struggle she has with the various different forms of education she goes through, but always isolated from the rest of the deaf community. I enjoyed the book, even if the character didn’t show much development throughout the story, because I feel I learned a lot from it and the story itself was quite moving.