But You Look So Normal

Starred review from April 1, 2024

The oldest child of parents who immigrated from Germany to escape from Nazis, Marseille was diagnosed with severe hearing loss at age four. She learned to read lips and adapted to bulky, erratic hearing aids that were less than helpful in group mainstream settings. The difficulty of communication with the hearing world sometimes made her feel misunderstood, isolated, invisible, and lonely, but she didn't let it stop her from learning to play classical piano, living on a kibbutz in Israel, and attending college in Berkeley during the socially chaotic times of the late 1960s and early '70s. After college, she pursued her artistic interests and eventually became a photographer and painter. Marseille's descriptions of how she dealt with setbacks are insightful and revealing about life for people with largely invisible disabilities. One of the book's biggest highlights is a lesson for all: how to open oneself up to find a joyful career and love. VERDICT A fascinating, beautifully written memoir about a woman determined to carve out a fulfilling life for herself.--Jennifer Moore

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2023
In this focused memoir, Marseille describes what it means to live with hearing loss. When the author was born, her parents had no idea that she suffered from a severe level of hearing loss. It was only after her nursery schoolteacher suspected that Marseille was deaf that she was taken to an audiologist. At 4, she started wearing a hearing aid but still had problems understanding others, leading to a sense of separation from others. Her tense childhood home also left her feeling alienated. Her parents had fled Nazi Germany and eventually divorced; her psychoanalyst father was sometimes frighteningly unpredictable (when she was 10, he encouraged her to take LSD). The memoir describes how the author tried to bridge the "gulf" hearing loss created in her life. Exploring her Jewish heritage, she traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz before being accepted into the University of California at Berkeley to study archeology. Marseille struggled to find a profession that was compatible with her "invisible disability" but later found fulfillment in the arts, becoming a fine-art portrait photographer and abstract painter. Marseille is a clear, expressive writer, and she effectively captures the effects of her hearing loss: "Tears ran down my cheeks as I realized, once again, how terribly alone I was. Every day I struggled to understand. There was so much I was missing. Meanwhile, almost nobody was listening." The author also draws on specific situations to illustrate the challenges of building a career: "I was barely able to hear on the phone even with the telecoil on my hearing aids....I hadn't told my prospective boss about my disability as I knew I'd be unlikely to get the job." Marseille's story is inspiring as it describes her path to accepting her hearing loss, although she remains aware that many people still "don't understand the myriad ways severe hearing loss impacts a life." Despite a hurried ending, this is an elegantly written memoir that raises awareness and will empower others. Sharp, informative prose.

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