Sound

By: Bella Bathurst

Narrated by: Bella Bathurst

Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

By the summer of 1998, it had become clear that there was something wrong with my hearing. It didn't happen suddenly but softly, so softly, I almost wasn't aware of it happening; sound seemed to have stolen away.

For 12 years, Bella Bathurst was deaf. She missed the punchlines and the jokes, avoided busy restaurants and raucous parties, and grew her hair long to cover hearing aids. But then, 12 years later, pioneering surgery on her ears gave her the chance to hear again.

Sound is the extraordinary story of Bella's journey into deafness and back to hearing. Mixing memoir with interviews with soldiers, sign language experts, musicians, and mental health workers, Bella explores what it means to live with and without sound, and, in the process, uncovers a hidden world of sense and connection.

If sight gives us the world, then hearing - or our ability to listen - gives us each other. Warm, wry, and honest, this is a story not just for the one in six of us with hearing loss, but for everyone who ever listened.

Published in partnership with the Wellcome Collection.

Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life, and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events, and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity, and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries.

©2017 Bella Bathurst (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

important story of hearing loss, beautifully told

"Sight gives you the world, but hearing gives you other people."

This was one of the only audiobooks I could find in my search for an autobiography of a person with hearing loss, and having found Sound, I can't imagine a more articulate telling of the tale. Bella Bathurst follows every thread related to hearing and deafness in this book that is part personal narrative, part journalism, and part poetic reflection on the human experience. I occasionally found the performance to be stilted, but I mostly chalk this up to the Britishisms that took some adjusting for my American ears. Otherwise, Bathurst's story is moving, entertaining, and informative. I cannot more highly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning more about how hearing is our interface with others in the world, and what the experience of its loss can mean.

Unnecessary obsenities

I tried to listen all the way to the end but just could not get past the crude, obscene dialogue, It's a good, interesting topic but just too rough for me.