Overview

A moving and fascinating book about sound and what it means to be human from the Somerset Maugham Award-winning author of The Lighthouse Stevensons (Financial Times). In this surprising and moving book, award-winning writer Bella Bathurst shares the extraordinary true story of how she lost her hearing and eventually regained it and what she learned from her twelve years of deafness. Diving into a wide-ranging exploration of silence and noise, she interviews psychologists, ear surgeons, and professors to uncover fascinating insights about the science of sound. But she also speaks with ordinary people who are deaf or have lost their hearing, including musicians, war veterans, and factory workers, to offer a perceptive, thought-provoking look at what sound means to us. If sight gives us the world, then hearing--or our ability to listen--gives us our connections with other people. But, as this smart, funny, and profoundly honest examination reveals, our relationship with sound is both more personal and far more complex than we might expect. Bathurst is a restless, curious writer . . . After reading this book, I found myself listening in a richer and more interested way. --The Guardian A hymn to the faculty of hearing by someone who had it, lost it and then found it again, written with passion and intelligence . . . terrifying, absorbing and ultimately uplifting. --Literary Review Bathurst's affecting memoir will enlighten and educate. --Publishers Weekly A memoir of hearing loss and what the author learned . . . through her unexpected recovery from it. A good writer knows material when it presents itself, and Bathurst is a very good writer. --Kirkus Reviews

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9781771643832

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Reviews

For The Lighthouse Stevensons Bathurst's elegantly written saga is bursting with life, laced with romantic dreams... Even readers with no special interest in the sea or Scotland will be swept up in Bathurst's narrative... Her exuberant family drama is an enchantment. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Stunning...It's hard to imagine many writers who could make civil engineering thrilling, but that's what Bathurst does. --San Francisco Chronicle Bathurst... [writes] with an enchanting eloquence. --New York Times Book Review For Special As 'special' as its title, this stunningly observed, wickedly funny, and ultimately tragic first novel is hightly recommended. --Library Journal (Starred) As fiction, utterly devastating, as psychology, grim and apocalyptic: a ripped-bare portrait of the evil that children can do. --Kirkus Reviews Dazzlingly written, blistering with feeling --Boston Globe

Bathurst is a restless, curious writer... After reading this book, I found myself listening in a richer and more interested way. -- Guardian A hymn to the faculty of hearing by someone who had it, lost it and then found it again, written with passion and intelligence ... a brave and important work ... terrifying, absorbing and ultimately uplifting. -- Literary Review Less a memoir than an investigation of the importance of sound in human life ... a moving and fascinating book, all about sound and what it means to be human. It has its share of sound and fury, and benefits from a journalist's ability to listen. -- Financial Times A memoir of hearing loss and what the author learned...through her unexpected recovery from it. A good writer knows material when it presents itself, and Bathurst is a very good writer. -- Kirkus Reviews For The Lighthouse Stevensons Bathurst's elegantly written saga is bursting with life, laced with romantic dreams... Even readers with no special interest in the sea or Scotland will be swept up in Bathurst's narrative... Her exuberant family drama is an enchantment. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Stunning...It's hard to imagine many writers who could make civil engineering thrilling, but that's what Bathurst does. --San Francisco Chronicle Bathurst... [writes] with an enchanting eloquence. --New York Times Book Review For Special As 'special' as its title, this stunningly observed, wickedly funny, and ultimately tragic first novel is hightly recommended. --Library Journal (Starred) As fiction, utterly devastating, as psychology, grim and apocalyptic: a ripped-bare portrait of the evil that children can do. --Kirkus Reviews Dazzlingly written, blistering with feeling --Boston Globe

Author Information

Bella Bathurst is a writer, photojournalist, and furniture maker. She has written four nonfiction books, including The Lighthouse Stevensons, which won the 1999 Somerset Maugham Award, and a novel, Special, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, and many other outlets.

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