The History of Sound: Stories by Ben Shattuck

Some books arrive at a perfect moment in your life, as if they were written just for you. I felt that way about Ben Shattuck’s 2022 nonfiction debut, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau.

Which is why I was eager to pick up his latest work, The History of Sound. In these 12 short stories, Massachusetts native Shattuck makes masterful use of the New England landscape as he jumps across time: Deerfield Academy in the 1980s; Nantucket in 1700s; an early-1900s logging camp.

The end result is an extraordinary series of tales linked by artifacts, events, and memories. And just like his previous book, I couldn’t put it down. —Ian Aldrich, Yankee executive editor

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, artifacts, 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

• Publisher:‎ Penguin Books
• Paperback
• Print length:‎ 320 pages
• Item Weight:‎ 8 ounces
• Dimensions:‎ 5.05 x 0.69 x 7.7 inches