Soon to be a major movie starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor'Exquisitely crafted deeply
imagined exhilaratingly diverse The History of Sound places Ben Shattuck firmly among the
very finest of our storytellers' - Geraldine Brooks New York Times bestselling author of
HorseIn twelve luminous stories set across three centuries The History of Sound examines the
unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over
generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection each story has a companion story which
contains a revelation about the previous paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed
history is refracted and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.
The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky dim
bar only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the
First World War forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later in another story a woman
discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in
Maine. Shattuck's inventive exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the
contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond-into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably
modern. Memories artefacts paintings and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways
among evocative beaches forests and orchards revealing the secrets misunderstandings and
love that linger across centuries. Written with breathtaking humanity and humor The History of
Sound is a love letter to New England a radiant conversation between past and present and a
moving meditation on the abiding search for home.
