A review by haxxunne
Hark by Alice Vincent

emotional informative inspiring mysterious slow-paced

4.5

A memoir and memento mori

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In a book with few parallels, Vincent explores women’s listening in a world filled with the noise of men, precipitated by hearing her developing baby’s heartbeat. Ranging from music to speech, noise to art, and of course silence, Vincent’s journey in sound is highly personal, including her family, her friends, her life as a music journalist before all this motherhood, and even in motherhood, there are new sounds to be heard and noted and explored: a baby’s first cry, their breathing, auditory illusions and overwhelming noises. 

Song, science, the written word, performance, d/Deaf experience, anechoic chambers and sound mirrors, the Northern Lights, gay switchboards and songbirds: at times inconsistent and inexact, at others offering a surfeit of detail, this is a Frankensteinian memoir and memento mori that reminded me that sound isn’t a background but a thing in itself, a whole aspect that changes what we sense, feel and remember. Cameos include Jenny Sealey (IYKYK), Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, IONE (new to me too): a panoply of women with sound at the centre of their lives, never mind all the other stuff. 

A generous welcome to a lifelong companion: four and a half stars