That subtitle sums up the structure of Ben Shattuck’s beautifully constructed The History of Sound comprising twelve stories, each with a companion piece. That alone would have made me want to read it but the promise of a film adaptation starring Paul Mescal was an added spur; shallow as that might seem, he’s a such a fine actor I suspected that if he liked it there was a good chance I would, too. Partly because of the quality of the writing and partly because of that structure my usual approach of picking favourites won’t work for this one so all twelve get a mention.
The history of sound, lost daily. I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder; the sun the needle, laid on the land and drawing out the day’s music – the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting. And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people washing across Earth like static.
In the titular opening piece, a folk music expert recalls the summer of 1919, spent collecting songs with the love of his life. Edwin Chase of Nantucket sees a man remember the painting left by the artist who’d visited his widowed mother in 1796, understanding that they had once loved each other. The painting reappears in The Silver Clip about a twentieth-first-century artist asked by a widow to complete the portrait left unfinished by her husband. In Graft a woman is unsettled by a boy in Boston’s Peabody Museum in 1893, wondering if he might be the son she left behind on the family fruit farm while Tundra Swan sees nature put a troubled father’s worries into perspective as he contemplates the specimen trees he’s stolen to fund his son’s rehab. In August in the Forest a writer is forced to face his feelings for his best friend after stumbling upon the mystery of what happened to a logging crew, solved in The Journal of Thomas Thurber a record of the crew’s daily life which becomes increasingly dark. Radiolab: Singularities is a present-day story of love and regeneration sparked by thirty-year-old photo of a Great Auk, long thought extinct, a puzzle touchingly resolved in The Auk. In The Children of New Eden a charismatic seventeenth-century preacher’s congregation builds a settlement which becomes a living hell rather than the heaven he’d promised, described in Introduction to The Dietzens: Searching for Eternity in the North American Wilderness, the very personal preamble to a book about the sect and their bloody fate. The collection is brought satisfyingly full circle with the opening story’s companion piece, Origin Stories, in which a young woman finds a set of old recordings, discovering that they belong to the folk music expert she’d seen on TV.
The peepers started up. A gust pushed through the forest. The first stars came. Soon, millions of songbirds would be migrating, flocks like storm clouds moving through the night, navigating home under the stars, passing overhead unseen.
Set largely in New England, Shattuck’s stories crisscross centuries. As his epigraph suggests, the stories are arranged in twos, the second echoing or picking up the threads of the first while the opening and closing stories bookend the whole. Themes of love, sometimes lost or thwarted, loss, art and the natural are explored in this engrossing, intricately constructed collection. Shattuck’s writing is lyrical, poetic but elegantly understated, often rooted in the dramatic landscape in which they’re set. Hard to see how this one’s going to be adapted for a movie, but I may well find out if it comes to fruition.
Swift Press London 9781800754805 320 pages Paperback (read via NetGalley)
I’m not a great reader of short stories, but this collection sounds very tempting, and cleverly constructed too. One to look out for.
It’s one of those collections that would suit an occasional short story reader well, and the writing is excellent.
Like Margaret I’m not a huge reader of the short story but I trust your opinion
Ah, thank you, Mairéad!
There was meant to be 100% after that…
Even better…
Oh I love the sound of this. Definitely going to look out for it, sounds beautifully structured.
It was that structure that initially attracted me but the writing turns out to be gorgeous too.
I love the sound of the structure and the writing here!
Highly recommend this one. It’s a little gem.
This sounds a bit like Daniel Mason’s North Woods, which I enjoyed a good deal—and that simile of the earth as a wax cylinder and the sun as the needle is superb!
I recently added that to my list. Perhaps it was you that persuaded me. That quote’s so striking, isn’t it. Lots more like that I could have pulled out.
Hope you enjoy the Mason—it’s not earth-shattering but it’s well done.
Just to pipe up and say yes, very much so — I’m halfway through the Shattuck just now and the scope and New England settings are reminiscent of North Woods. Susan, I’ll return to your review once I’ve finished reading.
That’s very persuasive.
And he’s married to Jenny Slate! Well, count me in for all the reasons you’ve said…plus that mark in his good-taste column.
Perhaps she’ll be in the movie if it comes to pass.
This sounds stunning. I’m baffled as to how they’ll make a film adaptation though…
Me, too. If Paul Mescal’s in it I’ll be seeing it although that doesn’t apply to Gladiator II!