The History of Sound

This evocative collection invites readers into a series of twelve stories set across centuries in New England—where echoes from the past reverberate through journals, recordings, and faint memories. Each pair of stories acts as narrative couplets, where the second deepens, refracts, or completes the first, weaving together decades of love, loss, desire, and the tender power of recollection. In the haunting title piece, two men who meet over music in a dimly lit piano bar haunt one another’s lives long after, connected by folk songs captured on wax cylinders and a summer that changes everything. Shattuck’s prose is both lyrical and grounded, turning artifacts and landscapes into emotional landscapes.

~  Included for its eloquent meditation on queer intimacy, memory, and the way love and longing echo across time. A beautiful and emotionally precise trip through layered history, identity, and the spaces we inhabit.  ~