The History of Sound - Now a major movie starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor

Ben Shattuck

Summary

Now a major movie starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor
'Triumphant' The Times

'Stellar' Daily Mail

'Exceptionally accomplished' The Scotsman

'Sublime' Observer

'Exquisite' Sunday Post
In 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.

Available since: 07/09/2024.

Print length: 320 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Dead Plague

Andrew Tomlinson

Warning: do not read this book if you are of a sensitive disposition! 
 
Within this book lies a collection of short stories each different from the other but all connect with aspects of horror, suspense and survival, set within a post-apocalyptic world, where the dead have risen from an unknown viral outbreak, that abidingly seek the flesh of the remaining survivors. 
  
The remaining humans attempt to find some semblance of a life on a reformed earth created by the dead. Each story depicts how the dead have reshaped the lives of the survivors and illustrates how they struggle to conform to the change while trying to hold onto some sanity and attempt to continue with life while pondering how long that life will be.

Show book

The Open Boat

Stephen Crane

As a well-paid war correspondent, Crane was shipwrecked en route to Cuba in early 1897. 
He and a small party of passengers spent 30 hours adrift off the coast of Florida, an experience which Crane would later transform into his most famous short story, The Open Boat, in 1898. 
(P)2007 Listen and Live Audio, Inc.

Show book

A Lonely Ride

Bret Harte

A Lonely Ride by Bret Harte is a short story that captures the essence of a solitary journey through a dark and desolate landscape. The narrative begins with the protagonist boarding a stagecoach in Wingdam, California, on a night that is both ominous and quiet. As the only passenger, he reflects on his surroundings and the peculiar behaviors of those at the hotel, who engage in odd rituals before his departure.

Show book

Home Life Relayed - BBC presents...

E M Delafield

Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture, and more commonly known as E M Delafield, was born in Steyning, Sussex on 9th June 1890.

Raised in the fading years of the Victorian era with its Empire and strict moral codes Delafield, not yet married at twenty-one, joined a French religious order, in Belgium, but soon decided that this was a totally wrong choice for her.

Her next challenge was her work during the horror of the First World War. Delafield decided to take up a position as a nurse in a Voluntary Aid Detachment in Exeter. It was whilst here that she managed to write her first novel, ‘Zella Sees Herself’.

With the end of the war new opportunities were sought and she now took up a position for the South-West Region of the Ministry of National Service in Bristol. With it came enough time to write two more novels: ‘The War Workers’ (1918) and ‘The Pelicans’ (1918).

On 17th July 1919, she married Colonel Arthur Paul Dashwood, OBE, an engineer responsible for building the massive docks at Hong Kong Harbour. The marriage produced two children; Lionel and Rosamund. That same year her fourth novel, ‘Consequences’, was published.

The couple spent their early years in Malaya but returned to England to live in Croyle, an old house in Kentisbeare, Devon. Delafield continued to collect responsibilities and organise whatever she could. At the initial meeting of the Kentisbeare Women's Institute, Delafield was unanimously elected president, and also became a Justice of the Peace, raised the children and, of course, continued to write her best-selling novels.

Her greatest work is undoubtedly the largely autobiographical ‘Diary of a Provincial Lady’, which is a simply structured journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman, living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s. It spawned several best-selling sequels. Her works also includes stage and radio plays, film scripts and short stories.

After the death of her son in 1940, her health began to markedly decline.

E M Delafield died on 2nd December 1943 after collapsing whilst giving a lecture in Oxford. She was 53.

Show book

Top 10 Short Stories The - D H...

D H Lawrence

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

In his hey-day and his pomp, D H Lawrence was regarded as both a genius and a pornographer. Today his works are powerful reminders of his talents and his unique outlook on life. Lawrence is one of a select few able to bring character and narrative into a pulsating blend of literary fiction.

01 - The Top 10 - D H Lawrence - An Introduction
02 - A Modern Lover
03 - The Rocking Horse Winner
04 - The Old Adam
05 - The Border Line
06 - A Fragment of Stained Glass
07 - Her Turn
08 - Odour of Chrysanthemums
09 - The Fly In The Ointment
10 - The Horse Dealer's Daughter
11 - A Lesson On A Tortise

Show book

Truth & Dare - A Short Romance...

Kornelia Blackmore

College students, Yumi, Ares, & Phoebe invite Yumi's ex bf Caleb on a camping trip (who were friends in high school.) 
But when a game of Truth & Dare is proposed around the bonfire by Ares, what secrets are revealed?

Show book