Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by rachelrubin
The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck
5.0
Haunting and beautiful, and it really left an impression on me from both angles. I'm not usually into short story collections, but these 12 weave together though time, themes, and sometimes even question and answer... If I remember correctly, they all touch on love and loss in some way.
In the first pages he calls out --
"Hook-and-chain: A song or poem form popularized in eighteenth-century New England, in which the first and last lines rhyme and contains rhyming couplets within.
As in: A BB CC DD EE FF A.
The second half of the couplet often completes the sentence or sentiment of the first."
And that's the format of this book. The A at the end is the capstone for the A in the beginning, which brings it full circle. In between are sets of two connected stories.
This is an easy 4 star read, but creativity and effectiveness of pulling off that format bumps it up to 5 stars.
Audiobook is great. It has a full cast, several narrators familiar names as Hollywood actors. I did the kindle/audio combo and really absorbed each story.
In the first pages he calls out --
"Hook-and-chain: A song or poem form popularized in eighteenth-century New England, in which the first and last lines rhyme and contains rhyming couplets within.
As in: A BB CC DD EE FF A.
The second half of the couplet often completes the sentence or sentiment of the first."
And that's the format of this book. The A at the end is the capstone for the A in the beginning, which brings it full circle. In between are sets of two connected stories.
This is an easy 4 star read, but creativity and effectiveness of pulling off that format bumps it up to 5 stars.
Audiobook is great. It has a full cast, several narrators familiar names as Hollywood actors. I did the kindle/audio combo and really absorbed each story.