“Polyphonic fiction… A reminder of the short story’s power…The History of Sound marks Shattuck as one of the form’s brightest lights…A terrific writer…Deeply resonant.” —The Boston Globe

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound showcases breathtaking humanity and humor. These twelve luminous stories — set across three centuries — are a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home.

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.

About the Author
Ben Shattuck is the author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau. His books have received acclaim from the New Yorker, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and the Wall Street Journal. He has been the recipient of the New York Times Best Book of Summer, a New England Indie Bestseller, and was nominated for the Pen/Faulkner Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he lives with his wife and daughter on the coast of Massachusetts, where he owns and runs the oldest general store in America, built in 1793. He is also the director and founder of the Cuttyhunk Island Writers’ Residency.

Photo credit: Andreas Burgess