The History of Sound

Publishes 11/03/2025 - Pre-order now!

Gabi's Review

These stunning and ingeniously linked short stories have been called a love letter to New Hampshire. Ben Shattuck is a Pen America-winning author who is also the owner of Davoll’s, the oldest General Store in America based in New Hampshire. This provenance and interest in the region’s history positions him well to convincingly evoke both the past and the present. What also distinguishes this wonderful collection is Shattuck’s love of art, his talent for describing setting and his profound sense of humanity.
 
One short story from this collection has been made into a film called ‘The History of Sound.’ The story follows two young men, Lionel and David, in 1916 Maine who, through the use of wax cylinder recording technologies, set out to capture the lives, voices and musical legacy of folk ballads: remnants of the Scottish, English and Irish settlers to the region. The story begins in 1984 in Cambridge Massachusetts, when Lionel, now an elderly and esteemed music scholar, receives a box of cylinders from the wife of a College professor who found them in the house she purchased. Centred on the role of chance in our lives, ‘The History of Sound’ beautifully renders Lionel's recollection of lost passions. 

In the story ‘Graft,’ also set in Massachusetts, artifacts symbolise both character and the era. It opens in the Peabody museum, where a woman called Hope watches a boy, convinced he is her lost son, as he examines an exhibit of intricate glass flowers. Flashback to an apple orchard in 1881, where we learn that Hope, whose insecurities cripple her better judgement, falls pregnant to a man with a partner and children of his own. The apple orchard becomes the location of a linked tale, ‘Tundra Swan,’ in which the deterioration of a once beautiful location reflects a couple’s inability to help their drug- addicted son.

Paired stories are rich with subtle and resonant connections. ‘The Journal of Thomas Thurber’ is a poignant cameo of a married man whose seasonal stints working in the lumber industry afford him respite from the constrictions of life in a small town. The journal is an account of what he cannot express to his wife, who opposes his choice to work away from home. In the story ‘August in the Forest,’ the journal becomes a device to characterise an insecure contemporary writer’s search for creative inspiration. His discovery of an old newspaper article in a New Hampshire museum reveals an unsolved mystery from the early 20th century about a camp of loggers found dead in the snow, a discovery which becomes his release from writer’s block.

These stories offer interesting insights into American history through the creation of memorable characters and intriguing artifacts that connect them through the centuries to the current day. This luminous collection spans a range of subjects, from the desolate wind-swept landscape of 18th-century Nantucket, the transformation of lives, and the enduring qualities of human-made objects that stand for something much larger than themselves.

Publisher's Review 

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 Horse

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.