If you’re someone who pays attention to new and upcoming movies, chances are you might have heard of a new film set to release in theaters this September, The History of Sound. Featuring beloved Irish actors Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, the movie is an LGBTQ+ historical romance declared to be “a cinematic romance for the ages” by The Playlist. Obviously, my interest was piqued. Imagine my surprise then when I found out it was originally a book.
The History of Sound is written by author and artist Ben Shattuck and contains 12 short stories set in New England. Published in July 2024, his book won the Story Prize Spotlight Award for short story collections and was shortlisted for both the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Yet, the book has minimal reader reviews since its release.
If possible, the plot of the book sounded even more intriguing than the movie: “a stunning collection of interconnected stories set in New England exploring how the past is often misunderstood and how history, family, heartache, and desire can echo over centuries in twelve luminous stories set across three centuries.” I think it goes without saying that I was immediately sold.
Essentially, each short story has a pair, connecting the past to the present in some way. I’m usually wary of short story collections. I typically find them to be underdeveloped or unoriginal, oftentimes repeating the same kind of themes with a stilted cadence. The History of Sound was neither.
In fact, this book is the antithesis of that description. The paired chapters make for an interesting, more dynamic twist on a short story collection. Instead of bringing you into one world and swiftly thrusting you into the next, Shattuck weaves an intricate tapestry, oh-so carefully preserving the emotional weight and tone from one story to the next.
It’s difficult to give much away about the plot of each story because of their interconnection with their pairs. This book is like 12 stories rolled into six, rolled into one. But Shattuck pulls it off.
The book begins with its titular story and the focus of the upcoming movie. Lionel Worthing, an elderly man, receives a box of phonograph cylinders from a stranger that turn out to be the exact same ones that he and his past lover David recorded together back in the 1910s. The package leads Lionel to think back on his memories with David, particularly the summer of 1919 that they spent collecting American folk songs in Maine.
The story follows the two men as they come of age during the influence of World War I. The two are brought together by music and, more broadly, the sounds that make up their lives. What follows is a tragic story of love, loss, heartbreak, hope, and a symphony of the sounds that make up the music of their lives. In under 30 pages, this story left me in emotional distress. Its depth of feeling is a decidedly impressive feat given its length, and it’s truly no wonder that this story became the centerpiece for the upcoming movie.
Unlike the other short stories contained in this novel, the counterpart to the “History of Sound” comes at the very end of the book, creating a full circle moment. It certainly aids in making it the most poignant story of the bunch.
With its pairing, “Origin Stories,” set 70 years in the future, the overall story feels more complete while also feeling very cyclical, an oxymoronic element that enforces the overall theme of interconnection between the past, present, and future. In it, we discover who the stranger was that sent Lionel the cylinders and how exactly they come across them. That last story leads back to a beginning that we as an audience originally saw as an end, life and hope persisting even in the face of death and heartbreak.
That’s not to say, however, that the other stories are any less thought-provoking or gorgeously written. Of course, some stories were notably better than others, as is common in short story collections. Most if not all of them hold up on their own though and fully grab ahold of their audience—exactly what a short story should be and why they’re often unsuccessful. It’s difficult to make that work in shorter prose.
The first pairing—“Edwin Chase of Nantucket” and “The Silver Clip”—take place centuries apart in Nantucket where a painting of a songbird connects past and present. “Hope” and “Tundra Swan” each follow two parents, in the 1890s and 2000s respectively, as they grapple with their pasts and their difficult relationships with their children.
“August in the Forest” follows August as he publishes his short story in an established literary magazine inspired by a town mystery dating back to 1929 involving the strange deaths of an entire logging site. Its accompanying story recounts what actually happened to the loggers during their winter venture in the New England woods.
“Radiolab: ‘Singularities’” is told through the format of a written account of a radio show. Anna tells the hosts about how a photo of a great auk, a bird thought to have been extinct for quite some time, leads to her traveling to Newfoundland where the picture was taken and how this shapes her future. The paired story, “The Auk,” provides background on the mysterious, confusing reappearance of this bird.
The last two stories before “Origin Stories”—“The Children of New Eden” and “Introduction to The Deitzens: Searching for Eternity in the North American Wilderness”—follow Karl Dietzen’s congregation, who believe they will ascend to heaven on a specific date through Karl’s instructions. The first short story follows a few of the followers of this religious group in the 1600s as they flee their village but soon realize Karl may not be who he says he is. The paired story is written as an introduction to a book about Karl and his followers and what ended up happening to them in the wilderness.
Shattuck bases all of his characters in a reality so strongly, they jump straight off the page. I felt every heartbreak, every glimpse of hope, and every other emotion in between felt by the characters. This made it extremely easy to connect with them from story to story, which I’ll emphasize is incredibly difficult to do in so short a format, especially for the incredible variety of characters in terms of personality and the time period in which they live.
He weaves a line that connects every character from each and every background into a perfectly articulate image, placing the simple act of an individual in the context of the macrocosm that is human existence. The human spirit and our desire for connection permeates throughout the book in a devastating but hopeful way, tonally haunting the narrative every step of the way.
The title itself, The History of Sound, is such an intriguing way of perceiving human existence. The titular story leads the audience into an overt interpretation of sound as music, this being the main force of connection between Lionel and David. But sound can have a more nuanced meaning, that being all the different, subtle auditory ways we connect with the world and the world connects back with us.
Overall, the book is a unique take on this format, and a fantastic read, whether you’re partial to short story collections or not. The novel is fresh, something that we as an audience haven’t seen done a million times before. In a world rife with unoriginality, I think that the complete inventiveness and cleverness of this book—coupled with its gorgeous prose of course—is what really made it a standout novel.
If you’re an audiobook listener, or honestly even if you’re not, I highly recommend taking a listen. Some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry are featured in the recordings, making the book an almost cinematic experience in and of itself. Actors such as Paul Mescal—who narrates the story he soon will be starring in—Jenny Slate, Ed Helms, and Nick Offerman have contributed as well as a plethora of talented narrators.
Don’t get me wrong, the book on its own is incredibly moving, and I would recommend it regardless, but the audiobook just adds a whole new depth. Ironically, though probably quite intentionally, the stellar production enforces the book’s idea of how sound can enhance connection.
Shattuck’s writing, though, in The History of Sound is so descriptive and lush that it makes me even want to read about him traipsing through the New England countryside. I didn’t have any expectations going into this book, but I will now be on the lookout for anything he writes in the future in any genre. If the movie is anything like the book, I know it will leave audiences truly captivated (and also probably sobbing into their popcorn buckets).
Image taken from IMDB.
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