β Scribed by Eliza Barry Callahan
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
A young woman reorients her relationship to the world in the wake of sudden deafness in this mesmerizing debut novel for readers of Rachel Cusk, Clarice Lispector, and Fleur Jaeggy
When the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist in her late twenties, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness, but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her yearβa score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attunedβwhile living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog.
Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encountersβwith neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians, and philosophersβmaking meaningΒ becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of...
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